farm of artifacts

By Anna Zwade

I was a child, barefoot, searching the asparagus fields

for reasons my father’s voice doesn’t grow tall.

it was our only trip to the farm of artifacts—

his childhood home bent toward the marsh;

his steps, inaudible,

while I bathed in my grandfather’s laughter

my father spent afternoons hovering outside doorways

as I stared into the sun, daring it to blind me,

not recognizing the moments

his sorrow felt like daybreak

until years later, when I heard him curse the stars

for hiding behind a thin sheet of blackness

in adulthood, as I found myself behind a locked door,

my father taught me how to shake a damp sky

you wait until it shakes itself

a lethargic hum beating against heaven,

holding breath for the morning dew