Urban Girl Writes Another Poem About Her Dead Father

My father is dead.

I notice it most 

During things that haven’t happened 

yet.

My Father is dead 

at my wedding. 

He is a slow dance of bullets

an autopsy trying 

to make polite conversation with the guests.

My flower girl is me at every age 

he did not see me turn.

I am throwing things I haven’t seen in years

(My virginity, pig-tails, my diploma, joy and names of old lovers).

My father is dead 

at the birth of my first child 

The doctor asks where is the father

I say murdered out of habit.

The doctor does not specify so neither do I 

Instead we both stare 

at my child who is named after the chill in the room. 

My father is dead 

at my death bed. We play

Blackjack until the light comes.

When it does, he lifts me onto his shoulders

I get the piggy back ride promised to a child

who time had been waiting on.