15
Urban Girl Writes Another Poem
About Her Dead Father
by Siarra Freeman
My father is dead.
I notice it most
during things that haven’t happened
yet.
My father is dead
at my wedding.
He is a slow dance of bullets
an autopsy trying
to make conversation with the guests.
My flower girl is me at every age
he did not see me turn.
I am throwing things I haven’t seen in years
(my virginity, pig-tails, my diploma, joy and names of old lovers).
My father is dead
at the birth of my first child
the doctor asks “where is the father”
I say murdered out of habit.
The doctor does not specify so neither do i
Instead we both stare
at my child who is named after the chill in the room.
My father is dead
at my death bed. We play
blackjack until the light comes.
When it does, he lifts me on to his shoulders
I get the piggy back ride promised to a child
who has been waiting
all this time.