number 27

food & thought
Lucky enough to have sub sandwiches with my parents around their dinner table and how I laughed with my mom when I realized I'd piled all my dad's favorite toppings on my own sandwich -- not knowing that he likes banana peppers and jalepenos and black olives and all the specific choices I had made, we laughed at how I've grown into a taste for these things that my father found a liking for years and years ago and now they find a home with me too as I quickly become the man and we ate our lunch there, warm indoors and with each other and our family laughter which is like no other: it was a respite, that meal, between me and my old man's work under the house that morning and later that afternoon, there in January with a broken hot water heater we replaced and made work in the mold and slime and dank crawlspaces we don't want to think about on hands and knees with shed snake skins all around us and our heads full of spiderwebs -- some of them made by the colony of black widows that haunts my parents' house and I chewed my bread thinking how lucky to work and talk with my dad all day like that, him still teaching, and my hands, grown now, still needing to learn from him and finally wanting to.

Day With My Father
Working all day in the dark,
skinned with muddy cobwebs, now
Dad boils water for our tea.