Second Sight

In my fantasy of fatherhood, in which I’m

your real father, not just the almost dad

arriving through random channels of divorce,

you and I don’t lie to one another—

shrugging each other off when words

get the best of us but coming

full circle with wan smiles.

When you hole up inside yourself,

headphones and computer screen

taking you away, I want to feel in ten years

that if I’m still alive you’ll still look

at me with that same wary expectancy,

your surreptitious cool-eyed appraisal

debating if my love for you is real.

Am I destined to be those shark-faced waves

that my death will one day make you enter?

You and your mother make such a self-sufficient pair—

in thrift stores looking for your Prom dress,

what father could stand up to your unsparing eyes

gauging with such erotic calculation

your figure in the mirror? Back of it all, when I

indulge my second sight, all I see are dead zones:

no grandchildren, no evenings at the beach, no bonfires

in a future that allows one glass of wine

per shot of insulin. Will we both agree

that I love you, always, no matter

my love’s flawed, aging partiality?

My occupation now is to help you be alone.