Little man,
little man,
as long as I live,
even if you get taller than me,
you’ll always be
my little man.
Used to Be
Used to be that my mom would make
these little lemon cakes that looked
like tiny loaves of bread. And me and my boys would each get our own
and a glass of milk.
The glasses had football teams on them.
Giants. Jets. Packers. Steelers. Seahawks. Raiders. Broncos. Bears. Even the 49ers.
Even the Patriots.
Used to be ten of those glasses. And four of us friends.
So we always had our choice.
Used to be the Patriots and 49ers never got chosen
by any of us.
Used to make us laugh.
Used to be that we’d all sit in the kitchen and talk
about stuff like why
we didn’t like the Patriots but loved the Giants.
And on days when my dad was home, he’d come in,
grab the 49ers or Patriots glass and fill it with milk.
Stare us down while he gulped it.
Used to be he’d always burp real loud, then say
Now, that’s the best milk I ever tasted.
Grow and know, he’d say. Grow and know.
Used to be we’d laugh and defend our own glasses,
argue about what teams were trash
and what teams weren’t.
Used to be we agreed on one thing, though:
My dad’s team was the best in the NFL and my dad
was the best tight end any of us had ever known.
Used to be we’d recite his stats over and over,
the four of us just sitting at the table
with my mom’s cake in our bellies
and our football glasses getting empty. My boys around me
as we laughed our way from
Friday afternoon into Friday night and
a whole lot of weekends too.
But how’d it get to be Used to Be?
Wasn’t even a long time ago.
Just feels like that.
Just. Feels. Like. That.
Bird
Yesterday, I saw the reddest cardinal ever.
Sitting in the oak tree we named Maple.
Watching me.
And it was such a perfect, perfect moment.
Then the bird blinked once, spread its wings,
flew away.
As though it was saying ZJ, remember this.
As though it was saying Remember me.
When It Feels like the Whole World Is Screaming
The cops came to our house last night
because somebody complained
about my daddy.
I don’t know who, though.
Sometimes it feels like the whole world is screaming.
Last night my daddy’s head was hurting
and nothing was helping it.
Not pills.
Not ice.
Not my mom making everything quiet in the house
and turning the lights down low.
So my mom said to my dad
Just lie down and close your eyes.
She patted their bed with her hand
while I stood in their doorway.
Come on, Zachariah, Mom said.
Do it for me and ZJ.
Just rest awhile.
But my daddy started yelling again, saying
It hurts so bad. Saying
I don’t know where I am anymore.
You’re home, Zachariah.
But my daddy ran downstairs
and outside.
And down the street.
Still holding his head.
Still yelling
It hurts so bad.
I hid under the dining room table, put my fingers
inside my ears.
But the noise snuck past my hands.
And then there were sirens.
And then there were two cops
bringing my daddy back.
You were the best tight end they ever had, one cop said.
Better than— And then the other cop named another guy.
That’s for sure, the first cop said.
But my daddy didn’t say anything. He had stopped screaming.
Just lay down on the couch and closed his eyes.
I miss you on the field, the first cop said.
Game feels different without you in it.
Thank you, my mom said, walking the policemen back to our door
before they could ask
what everybody asks.
If my daddy could sign a piece of paper
or their jackets
or their ball.
I stayed under the table
listening to my daddy’s voice become
a soft moan
that floated past me like
it was a song he was singing.
But in the place where the music should have been
it was just lots and lots of pain.
I wanted to believe it was how the singers did it.
But knew it wasn’t.
I fell asleep beneath the table
and Mama found me there
at dawn.
Part 2
The Ever After
Visit
There’s a doctor in Philadelphia that the doctors
in New York
and New Jersey recommended
sending Daddy to.
They say it has something to do with his brain.
Say maybe
it’s a concussion that is hanging on.
Rest, they say. Sleep, they say.
Take this pill. No, this pill. Well, maybe this one.
And there’s the pill that makes his feet swell.
And the one that blurs his vision.
And the one that makes it hard for food to stay
in his belly.
And when none of those pills work,
there’s another doctor to see.
Mama gets up before it’s light out to drive him.
Makes their coffee so strong, I can smell it
upstairs. I hear her making breakfast, smell the bacon and then the sweetness
of her maple pancakes, the ones where she spreads syrup over them, then puts them
back in the pan until they nearly burn but don’t—
just get sweeter.
I know I’ll come down to find my parents gone,
my breakfast under foil on the table, the house
too empty. Too big.
Later, with the sun up, I go from room to room,
touching my daddy’s trophies and medals,
sniffing his pillow—which smells like the lavender oil
Mama rubs his head with every night to help him sleep.
I walk into his closet, touch the line of helmets
on the shelf, the rows of sneakers and cleats,
the ties hanging together like one big red, green, orange and blue fan beside his dark suits.
I put my feet inside his leather shoes
that are so big, my feet disappear.
Try to walk and fall.
In the quiet, with nobody but me in the house,
I put my head on my arms
and cry.
Friends
One Saturday, Darry, Daniel and Ollie show up
at my house so early, I still got
my pj’s on. Under their jackets
they got on pj’s too.
Darry’s wearing ones with Batman
on the shirt, and Daniel’s are covered
in blue and pink poodles. He says
I dare y’all to try to laugh
at these jammies my grandma sent me.
We all go into the kitchen
and Ollie opens the fridge
like it’s his own house, which
it kinda is because he’s always here
and always opening the fridge.
Y’all want grilled cheeses? he asks
and we all say Yeah.
Ollie learned to cook from Bernadette,
who said I’m not raising a son
who can’t feed himself when he needs to.
We sit in the kitchen eating and talking
about everything except my daddy, and it’s like
my boys know that all I need right now
is for them to be around me, stretching
our grilled cheese as far as we can from our
mouths and laughing when it strings down
our chins or snaps against our noses.
All I need right now is the sound of their voices
filling up
all the empty spaces.
Who wants seconds? Ollie says.
And we all say I do!
Pigskin Dreams
My daddy always loved telling me about
his pigskin dreams.
Even as a little boy, he’d say, I had all kinds
of dreams. And I was always somebody’s hero.
And I’d say Now I’m a little boy, and
you’re everybody’s hero, and my dad would smile,
hug me.
Sometimes
there’d be the beginning of tears
in his eyes. I didn’t know why then.
But I do now.
It’s hard to stay a hero.
It’s like everybody’s just sort of waiting
for the minute you fumble the ball
or miss a pass
or start yelling at people when
you were never the kind of guy
to yell before.
They call it pigskin, my daddy once told me,
because back in the 1800s, footballs
were made out of pig bladders.
And we’d crack up when he said
Who was the person who thought
“I happen to have this bladder sitting around,
might as well fill it with air and throw it”?
Pig bladders, my dad would say.
People were out there playing
with the bladder of a pig.
Then rubber came along, and I guess
the pigs were probably happier
than anyone.
Some Days
Some days my dad doesn’t remember
stuff like the day I was born and how it rained
for sixteen days straight before I came.
My daddy used to swear they had to take a boat.
Sailed to the hospital as captain, he used to say.
Came home with a first mate.
And I’d ask about Mama—what was she.
Everything. Your mama was and is
everyone and everything to me.
Tell me about the boat again, Daddy. But now
he says he doesn’t remember.
Some days he sits in his big chair by the window
and stares out at Sweet Pine.
Asks us over and over again What kind of tree is that?
It’s fall again. And the leaves are bright orange
and Maple’s leaves are too
and even Crabby with her red berries and yellow leaves is beautiful.
You look out and it’s like the sky’s on fire, my daddy says.
You look up, he says, and it’s the most beautiful thing.
Some days his repetition sounds like the chorus of a song.
You look out and it’s like the sky’s on fire.
You look up and it’s the most beautiful thing.
I watch my mom watching him from the kitchen,
her eyebrows wrinkling.
Come watch these leaves with me, little man.
Come watch the way they fall, my dad says.
Come watch the way they fall, little man.
Come watch these leaves with me.
Back Then
Every Sunday night,
I’d run to the TV the minute the game was on.
I didn’t care about the crowds cheering in the stands.
I didn’t care about the cheerleaders
or the referees in their striped shirts
or the coaches getting mad at the referees.
I just wanted to see
my daddy
#44
tight end
I wanted to see him running past
the 40, 30, 25, 20, 15, 10 . . . yard line.
I wanted to see him make the touchdown.
And if anybody got in his way,
I wanted to see him go into them hard.
Helmet to helmet, body to body.
Again and again and again until it was like
he’d pushed right through a concrete wall
that wasn’t concrete but was
defensive ends and linebackers . . .
Helmet to helmet . . .
My head hurts so bad . . .
Tonight, while me and Mama eat dinner and
Dad naps on the couch,
she tells me more about the doctor in Philadelphia.
They are studying the connection, she says,
between concussions and what’s happening to your dad.
She stirs her broccoli around on her plate. Most of her food’s
still there. Most of mine too.
But no one seems to be sure of anything.
Mama pushes her plate away and looks at me.
In the dim light of the dining room,
her eyes are dark and sad.
There’s a penalty in football called holding.
You’re not supposed to tackle a player
who doesn’t have the ball.
You’re not supposed to snatch him and slam him down.
Or hold on to him.
But sitting there with my mom
and my dad snoring on the couch
and the doctors knowing but not knowing,
I feel like someone’s holding us,
keeping us from getting back to where we were before
and keeping us from the next place too.
The Broken Thing
There’s not a name for the way
Daddy’s brain works now.
The way it forgets little things like
what day it is and big things like
the importance of wearing a coat outside
on a cold day. There’s not a name
for the way I catch him crying
looking around the living room like
it’s his first time seeing it.
This morning, Daddy’s afraid to go outside.
I want to grab his hand and pull him
hard
past the front door into the daylight.
I want to yell at him, tell him it’s only
outside.
But I don’t. I just stand there
not knowing what’s supposed to come
after this.
I don’t know what’s out there, my daddy says.
Something big, he says. Something broken
that I don’t know how to fix.
Haiku for Daddy
After school, in the empty house, I eat a snack
and pull out my guitar.
Strum it soft then harder then soft again,
let the music
echo through the rooms. Practice what
my choir teacher told us, to bring the air up
from my stomach when I sing to
breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
Daddy, you asked me
to write you a song. I said
I’d write a hundred.
I sing the haiku song I wrote for Daddy over and over,
until the empty house is filled up with something.
Music.
Words.
Breath.
Before Tupac and Biggie
The music stays the same.
The way it makes Dad remember.
The way it makes him smile, tell the stories
about the songs
that he’s always told me.
Before there was Tupac or Biggie or even Public Enemy,
my daddy said,
there was the Sugarhill Gang. When they rapped,
people understood all the words.
There was this one part in a Sugarhill song
where this dude talked
about another kid’s mama’s cooking.
Back in the day you’d lose a tooth talking trash
about someone’s mama, but
we just laughed every time that part came on.
We’d all been there.
Been where? I asked.
At that table where you sat down hungry and
the minute the food landed,
your stomach turned to stone.
I remember my friend’s mama putting a plate
of liver in front of me. With onions and plantains
and I don’t know what all else.
But don’t you dare not eat it and embarrass your friend and insult his mama, my daddy said.
So I slid that liver and onions into the pocket of my coat.
Grease stains on that coat forever.
Write that down, ZJ, my daddy said.
Sounds like the beginning of one of our songs.
It’s just about some food, though, I said.
Nah. It’s about everything, my dad said back.
That’s where these great songs
are coming from. The simple stuff, like
what you see and what you eat and what you
hide in your pocket to throw away.