My father's hands
by Sriya Narayanan
[ poetry - february 10 ]
My father carried around in his head a list
A list of people who should be lined up and shot
It included the government, my mother
Teen smokers, male nurses and women drivers.
As a clumsy fifteen-year-old
I moved to the top of that list when I spilt
Hot cocoa on his glistening laptop
And mangled his spreadsheets. Time for his hands
His hands, because he wasn't one to use weapons
I went to school with five fingers on my face and
A purple bruise hidden behind a grey uniform
Yesterday, as tinted glass windows blackened the sky
The sky that lay still as the years went by
I waited by his bed. He slipped away
Cause of death: multiple organ failure, they wrote
Organs that quit, all at the exact same time
Like pissed off members of a labour union
Who'd finally had it with the man for whom
Good enough was never good enough.
