Sestina (for My Father, Who Is Still Alive)

[matsunosuperfan]

god only knows why I keep trying to write these things
--

Sestina for My Father, Who is Still Alive

Dad is a relentless whore for hummingbirds,
whose thimble bodies he pumps every morning
full of nectar, water boiled with sugar
until sweetness fills each molecule.
Their hoods flame through the mist like aerial lights.
He feeds them to make up for what he lacks,

forgetting, at times, their names, but not for lack
of effort, fumbling with hummingbird
syllabics, consonants that won't alight
for long on his branched tongue. It's always morning
in the suburbs, where the doctor mixes molecules
to heal the brain, a measured strain of sugar,

chained triglycerides. Danny brings the sugar
and we do it in the bathroom. What we lack
in love we make up with denial, molecular
refusal of the rope wrapping our necks. A hummingbird
will die if it stops flying, and the morning
waits for no one, so they vibrate in the light

as if there were no fate to find but light
and motion. July the fourth sends sugar
spilling down the blackened sky, the next morning
my father breaks his hip. What we lack
when meeting death is not grace, but a hummingbird:
all the sound vibrations gathered in one molecule.

If I could split it, I would take the dawn's first molecule
into my mouth, make light
work of despair. But I am not a hummingbird.
I move only when moved by impulse, sugar
scattered on the sidewalk, shadows lackadaisical
holding their fading limbs up to the morning

in submission. Now there's no time for mourning
what we thought we'd be, no molecule
missing in our genes to blame for how we still lack
wings—forgive me, father. I don't mean to make light
of your desperation. I know you spilled the sugar
before you could count the grains. Humming, birds

attach themselves to you as light clings
to an iris, the pupil mourning that its sugared portal
can't catch all the molecules that fly from you like birds.