Missing Person, and: Scared to Hold the Baby

Abstract

Missing Person*, and: Scared to Hold the Baby A. H. Jerriod Avant (bio) MISSING PERSON Last time home, I saw a pair of shoes tucked into a cornerand it looked as if they hadn’t been moved since he was here. The dust on them sacred and still, when I’m home, my mindlabors, in the dust. It’s been 6 years but I say it hasn’t happened. Though the day persists, he’s still tucked into a cloud tucked intoa tree in the back of a long black car and my throat won’t let my heart through no matter how flat my epiglottis falls. All aboutthe day breaking is clean so why this horror? A nightmare in my wake. A black silk-blend pressed smooth, upholstering silentemotion, boldly not a dent on him. We dare name this night with its sun out high, hanging by its hands where the room wastoo small to be holding so much ache. Our worlds now captured by a piece of forest carved tightly, hinges now let us in or shut us outbut they fail to shut him in. A tree uprooted. The one I fell from, and I’m the only one to find him showing up in my day. Meetings,business trips scattered him and I knew he’d be back but not back so soon or in this form and the way I am nervous about itall, if I am losing it and if he’s gone how is he here with me? The dining room table, an altar where we open all bodies, eithergive or take, how his form sits in cheer, naked torso and you are to act as if his generous breasts aren’t private parts. I don’tsee how I see what I’m seeing. My eyes shaping a silhouette [End Page 240] of the man who raised me as the sun raises all of our sleepyshadows. What gives when two realms refuse to budge and won’t make that sway completely to either world? Imaginationis a long, worn, leather belt spread around my only hope; this yearning for Pops to adjourn a meeting he’s not in, get hometo build dinner around venison; a staple holding us full. The dates leading up, I never get wrong. Their quick succession still stings.It seems I’m always in a reality I shouldn’t be in. Somehow our home preserves certain fingerprints. I map them and becomebored with the maps of this world. I would abandon one realm for another when I watch him swing into the driveway and catchhis breath from the day, before exiting the vehicle. I watch him honk the horn before he’s honking it. Passes me a crisp fifty-dollar bill because I’m there. Hands me baskets of new pecans and muscadines we’ll use. I hear him telling me howI’m trying to split the log against the grain and how that’ll wear me out the same way lying will. The same way alcoholwill, my liver and not cleaning the yard will eat at the lawnmower’s blades. I got a thing for fumbling through couplets. I hear himasking have I talked to Momma and he knows I have and what I’m about to say. How I’m knocking on the window of this otherrealm, begging to sing my confusion until he understands me. I’m eleven hundred and fifty-four miles from home, farther fromhim, and still, we continue this secret, of running into each other. [End Page 241] SCARED TO HOLD THE BABY the door wore a hopeful sign reading somebody gone wasgon “be back later.” some universal late shyt. an overworkedendocrinologist claims a thirty-minute callback but don’t ever call back. laid down horny & fatigued in the bed withits cracked clocks but not even these can drain the wildenergy from my hands. something says pull & pull & throw these few bags of faith I have at a fat absence. i throw mymuthaphukin’ hands up. plant these dead seeds in...