He came through the screen door at a forward lean with someone else’s fragrance on his throat,
Said he hit the jackpot and then listed what the jackpot cost at length to note,
Mom was horizontal on the sofa with her own ongoing pharmaceutical project,
And I was thirteen, operating a crash course in what affection means in context.
He dropped the Rolex on the table like it settled something fundamental here,
Asked if I’d been practicing my pitching arm — the kind of question fathers engineer,
Said “Someday, boy, you’ll understand all this — the flash, the charm, the play,”
But what I understood was: love is what remains when everything else runs away.
—
Daddy’s back from Vegas with his collar stained and his promises all hot,
He loves the family concept in the abstract but he can’t say what we’ve got,
The chips he cashed in won’t explain what three weeks of silence costs a son,
Daddy’s back from Vegas — that’s about the size of what he’s done.
—
By fifteen I could catalogue each iteration of his homecoming routine,
The souvenir, the record, the apology, the space between,
He’d sit at the kitchen table with a bottle and a monologue of youth,
And somewhere in the third hour, he’d get close enough to something like the truth.
He’s not a villain — I spent fifteen years trying to distribute blame correctly,
He’s just a man who loved the road more than the things that waited, indirectly,
I’ve got his hands and his jawline and his talent for the exit and return,
And I’m twenty-eight now hoping that I’m learning what he never chose to learn.