"Your Father's Silence" by Brandon McNeice
poetry
Your Father’s Silence
Silence.
you arrived first,
a second shadow across the table,
between the scrape of forks
and the clink of ice in a glass.
I filled your hollow throat
with the words I needed,
tried to make you say
what he would not.
Still, you sit with me now,
steady as the refrigerator motor
in the next room,
patient as a held breath
that will not release.
Brandon McNeice is a Philadelphia-based writer and educator. His work appears or is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, Plough, Front Porch Republic, Beyond Words, Sport Literate, The Rush Magazine, and Flash Frog.