My father doesn’t imagine in God or therapists—

as a substitute, he pedals his bike previous Brighton Seaside
to the Coney Island Y to swim his fifty laps.

As soon as, I went with him and watched as he emerged
from the locker room in light swim trunks

shifting slowly to the sting of the pool. He paused,
lifting his palms over the grey halo on his chest,

urgent his palms collectively in a gesture
I do know he realized as a boy.

My father’s eyes: religious with a darkness
he retains buried deep inside

the place it glows hell-hot because the ember
from the cigarillo his father—a womanizer,

drunk, half-asleep—dropped on the sheets
setting the mattress ablaze, and regardless that extinguished

stored smoldering invisibly contained in the mattress springs,
reigniting, sending the home up in smoke a second time.

So my father’s anger burns, a blood-wicked flame
scorching by the softest elements of his inside

till it rages by the home,
blackening the rooms once more.

Even within the absence of ideology
I’m attempting to be taught forgiveness—

I watched my father’s physique breach the air for only a second
earlier than he dove, disappearing beneath the floor.

Steam coiling by the chlorinated room,
the ripples his physique made nonetheless reached me on the opposite facet.