ARTIFACT

Here is my father, his waste, his skin shed and there in that old photo, his smile shining out like a religious artifact kneecaps exposed like undernourished fruit
waiting to harden into knobby posts
to fit the bristling trousers
of work and surrender, thrust off for the sex that would claim my first breathe.

Here is the father I could have wrestled to the ground, taught curse words to by the blasting heat of the old family furnace.
Here is the father I could have raced left breathless and expectant by the oak tree
his smile spread taut, teeth glinting
with the words he almost said
didn't say, will never say to me.