Alveoli
For my father
When I was a child, my father spoke
the stainless language of machines. He would
come home from work and anoint my face
with oil-stained hands. Never fixed
for long, he soon learned a new trade,
became a respiratory therapist. He turned
inwards to the pumps and pressures
of the body’s working. And he was good at it, his
steady mechanic’s hands in the dark thoracic chasm
keeping breathing unbroken. Now, my father is
the only one in this hospital room. I do not know why
the nurses let him stay. He links his hands
across my chest as they snip into my skin. You have to breathe, he says.
So I do.
Under his careful fingers, the heavy red slick machinery shudders on.
