The dress I wore at your fourth wedding is most likely gone from 
memory now. It was maroon lace over satin and matched the 
flush of my shame when you took me into the back of 
my new grandparents’ home and beat me for 
embarrassing you by raising my voice.
That is gone, too, I’m sure. 

Alongside the night you left me in a deer blind at midnight so that my
abandonment and terror might inspire a good story and the
way you hid me in the dawning field and taught me 
to be silent, to line up a sight, to recognize the 
unique staccato of a dove’s wings, and to
breathe as I pulled the trigger.

Gone is the night the lights went out and the Texas skies rattled your 
bachelor-pad windows and my four-year-old bladder loosed from 
fear onto your bedspread. You declared pizza by firelight a 
daring adventure, and the next morning I dove for 
rings in the deep end and you said I was
the best you’d ever seen.

We are erasing, you and me. The we that grew, layer upon layer, over a lifetime of
trying. The me that leapt into your arms when you showed up to a 
midweek game three hours from where you lived, the you that 
cursed at me for leaving with my mom. The emptiness 
between us across the line as we attempted to 
connect always won in the end.

You remember the cabin, with its peeling paint and outlaw radio and 
salty slapping of intercoastal waters, but do you ever see me 
there? You built it, you know, and brought me. From the 
porch we shot marshmallows and counted coyotes 
on the King Ranch at sunset and I lied 
about the dice under my cup. 

I ordered my letter jacket three sizes too big so it would fit you. You 
returned it the last time you came to my home, not knowing why 
your name was stitched there, not knowing how you’d come to
be with me, not knowing it was the last time. I try not to 
think about that. I try to remember our backyard, the 
summer songs, the dancehall shuffling.

If I’d lost you suddenly, as a child, when you were still Mythical 
Father, my grief may have marked me, twisting me around a 
knotted wound, forever marred. But you’ve been going for 
decades, and now it’s nothing more than a candle in the 
corner of a memory, nothing more than an 
outbreath in a cold field at dawn.