ISSUE 6

Joshua McKinney

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Dream #37

 

My father and I sit in shade

facing each other, our backs

against the trunks of large, smooth-

barked fruit trees. Beyond him,

a green field frosted with

blossoms, and in the long silences

bees drone over the clover.

I have not seen nor spoken

to my father in forty years.

After so much time, his reasons

for leaving seem irrelevant. What good

would come from accusation?

I have broken promises myself,

and I have come to understand

the inevitability of parting. I tell him

my mother has remarried and

is doing well, that my kids are

grown now and on their own.

“But are they ever, really?” he says.

I pick up a fist-sized windfall fruit,

polish it on my thigh, take a bite.

It has no taste. My father winces.

He looks terrible, and I must look

pretty bad myself. The bees have grown

louder; the air seems to vibrate

with their humming. I know

the question my father wants to ask,

but before he can ask it, a woman

screams, then appears

in full flight, pursued by three pitbulls,

and passes, in a stumbling run, over

a distant hill. “Is it always like this?”

I ask. My father cannot answer.

The tree he leans against reaches

two limbs down and tears open

the stapled suture stretching from

his throat to his naval. A bushel of

fruit spills from his chest cavity, scatters

across the grass like broken

billiard balls. Famished, I clutch at one,

but my mouth is full of bees.

They have found the hole

at the back of my head, and entering there

have built a comb in my skull.

I have not seen nor spoken to my father

in forty years. I cannot speak to him

now. I cannot even see him

for the honey oozing from my eyes.

 

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