"Your grown child plays make believe" and "The story you told when you drove down for parents' weekend after I came out"

Your grown child plays make-believe

I’m pretending to be you, Daddy. I’m biking to the meeting and I see an aquarium in someone’s trash and I think, I want that, so I get off my bike and hide the aquarium between two bushes and then I get back on the bike and go to the meeting.

I’m pretending to be you so I decide to build a terrarium out of that fish tank and whatever else I can find on my way home. So I climb into a few dumpsters and rescue some water bottles and a mug. And because

I’m pretending to be you, I dig up a shoot of ball cactus from somebody’s yard and put it in the mug in my backpack and I ride home all careful to keep my back straight so I won’t jostle the plant. And then I pick up the aquarium and wash it out and

I’m still pretending to be you, so I walk through the neighborhood at midnight looking for wood and there is none on the road--this isn’t home, it’s a college town (not our kind of violence), and nobody is stealing lumber to fix their patio and then overdosing before they even start--but 

I’m pretending to be you so when I pass by a house that’s dark and sleepy and I see some rotting project beneath their porch, I pull it out all quiet. And since

I’m pretending to be you, I carry the jumble home and, on my patio, pull it apart with a rusty hammer and I nick myself on a nail and I don’t wonder when I last got a tetanus shot. And I’m pulling apart these planks,

pretending to be you, and sacks of spider eggs keep falling all over me.

The story you told when you drove down for parents’ weekend after I came out

You, daddy, were sick
of the dirt or the dirt was sick of you.
             You spat rocks
                          out the window of your Toyota.
 
In the month of choking, your elbow
touched her
             waist. You withdrew. You showed
                          her the crystals
 
you coughed
             up. They were translucent
                                       pink and orange. She said rosacea
                          like you didn't know
                          what it means.
 
She folds
             your crystals into a brown
paper napkin and gentles
             into her purse.
 
                                       To be
                          touched
                                       on the elbow,
 
             the waist’s
             slope,
                          to be made crystal
                                       wrapped
                                                    in a napkin in someone’s purse,
to spread
             outward
                          moving forever
                          away from this
                                       moment’s self. You trusted
                                                    her. You coughed up
             pebbles. You coughed up dirt.