the real subject is always you

Despite my brain feeling like a pelican flapped my skull through it all night,

I’m still telling myself what I’m feeling is residual worry

to make up for the fact that

lately, God’s not being natural in his love for me,

not letting me follow my own path,

or supporting my choice to follow it to one of those end-of-the-dock life goals

I’ve taught myself is the only thing that’s going to carry me forward,

after all, fathers have heart attacks while reading novels in bed,

not while attempting to exceed their magnificently administrative wingspan,

a thought process that might be the only thing keeping me from feeling

the joyful fact,

that the farther apart my father and I became, while he was alive,

the closer we both came to admitting that

all we both ever really wanted to do was spend time looking for some real

honest to god answers: Why I’m still trying to blink myself back

into that ocean that never sleeps,

as I scurry underneath the waves

and across the sandy bottom fatherless sons have to venture deeper

and deeper into,

if they wish to find the thick and echoing silence through which to ask, respectfully,

for a hand.