Recognize the Imposter

The strange dominion of winter

that used to make me falter.

A father’s seasonal affective disorder

rivered through the hush of a family home.

Winter’s unkind contract gloried his cull,

tequila baptized our disinheritance.

Waiting for deceit, a family burrowed their hearts

away from the lurking freeze. The unconquerable

season carried unknown quantities of bewilderment

through our front door. As a boy, I stole a bottle of Jose Cuervo

from my dad’s glove compartment. Each sip shrunk his absence

until I drank myself into his landscape: the repeatable eye

of our Godless winter. Rooting into his darkness, I joined the man

I trusted with everything I was. A lord of his seasonal decline,

my father climbed out of his disgrace like an animal.

Now, just a pinky distance away, a child greets me

in a landscape screaming to be dropped,

happy I invited him here.