artwork: ralph murre
I MOVE MY TEENAGE SON’S MATTRESS
INTO A U-HAUL
~ by Shoshauna Shy
If I happen to remember Roy
- scruffy vet whom I met
on the New Mexican desert -
what I remember is the night my father
dropped by my first apartment
without warning.
Recent arrivals to that dusty two-horse town,
my father left the sweat of a big-city career,
and I left childhood.
He saw Roy
against the aspen, so why he rang
the doorbell anyway meant he stood
in the dark long enough to regret it
while I buttoned, zipped, straightened,
smoothened, wrestled open the door
and found him, hands clasped behind
his back with some excuse about money.
I could tell, by the light from the stairway,
that even though his shoulders said
Please forgive me, there was no apology
for wanting to stay in my life.
That’s all I remember about Roy
If Roy
he remembers something else,
I’m sure.
~ previously published in
The Orange Room Review
