Love Letter from Inside Fatherhood

Inside the trap, I spend weeks

remodeling the haven you’ll haunt.

Not for the joy of it,

but for the wonder

that keeps snapping

my neck.

Come December,

there’s a morning

when the sun slathers

the bare trees in saffron

and I hold you

more delicately

than I’ve ever held myself.

See how we’ve risen

before the moon has fallen?

See how we’ve nested and itched?

The boringness of it all

has infected us with wonder,

with want, with why?

And yet all of it—the blood

vocabulary, the fibroid angel,

the cries echoing

from birth and back—

all of it just beyond

our understanding—

our stranding.

But the truth

I don’t want

to tell you

is that you matter

more, then less,

then more—

and all of this

is breakable

and already

broken.