by Sarah Carleton
My dad is not walking around the house,
his knee making a little ping,
his cane rocking the backbeat,
and he isn’t telling the same joke
five times or working his way
through a story about a neighbor
who knew a guy who was the cousin
of an old college friend
or sitting with the crossword
spread out on his desk
before him like a quilting project.
But all of that is still in this room
among the photos of us in stages
of aging—babies in bundles, toddlers
piggybacking on the carpet, grownups
with our own kids attached like
cactus buds—the germ of fatherhood
sprouting, growing, decades
of dadness filling the idea of living
room so solidly he inhabits
this one even as we coach ourselves
to remember he is not here.