A Valediction for My Name

Part I.

the only memorable photograph I have is you
holding me
in a white cotton shirt, probably from the Island,
the fabric loose and stretched and thinned; a lone
thread dangling from the stitching of the sleeve seam -- weaving into the time I saw
the bulge of candy cradled in your khaki pockets and hearing your laughter dismiss my eyes as deceptive telescopes --
soul searchers and heart watchers that couldn’t get a thing right.

but I saw you suck them in the garden I saw you
among my mother’s hyacinths and ferns, I saw them
burst in your mouth like lonely black fireworks against lonelier black skies,
your dentures click-clacking like hooves of hoary show mares.

these knees have not forgotten to respond to the whip of your words;
picking the fallen cherry blossom petals blown in from hostile winter winds,
the ones that arranged themselves around your throne of wheels and canes where you
sat alone
against cyclic prints of dull, autumn flowers.

and remember the heat that irritated your skin tangled in the blankets?
your incessant demands to arrange the angle of the cerulean fan so that it would blow straight into your face?
you looked like a child swallowing mouthfuls of air from a leather backseat,
muted by gusts of dirt and exhaust of trucks that ventured to go places you would not.

but we made the whirring blades hit the bare wall, we made
them bounce onto your peppered chin hairs
that you silently unrooted as you stared and thought thoughts
that failed the fatal march to the tip of your tongue.

and by three, the company had gone home to the arms of less belligerent beds and states.
but we did not let you breathe alone
even when you gave up before we did.

and I beg you to know that though you died alone, you
did not die Alone.
you did not die Alone, you did not die,
Alone you did not, die Alone
you did not.