Paper Father
You fell from her words
like sparse confetti¾
without explanation, sans celebration, so I gathered
what I could of you: your name (along with her own) on the certificate that linked us,
just above diminutive inked footprints. A funeral card
with your mother’s name, Anne Fitzsimmons Sell, along with childish love letters to her
(“I was painting walls today, the color was ‘wild rose’ with a virgin lamb’s wool roller”), posted on different days
(sultry maybe) of August and September, 1960.
I made you into what was needed¾ tertiary folds and creases like the furrows of a young girl’s brow until you were my origami father, pressed and turned until you were enough, a sort of paper doll papa, an image for me
like sometimes a musician who traveled with a band (I roller skated in the basement to her Percy Faith album, thinking maybe he, with his dark hair, was you)
or I’d re-fold you into a soldier, dead of course,
(or on optimistic days just missing-in-action like the boys
of Vietnam) only I would get mixed up¾maybe it was the beach in Normandy, or somewhere south of Heidelberg or maybe you were hush-hush because you were a masked hero like “The Lone Ranger” or “Batman.”
In church I made the sign of the cross and said the words In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen and wondered if you were He and she was like Mary and now you were
up in the sky with my half-brother Jesus, only I would get mixed up¾and maybe you were the devil¾a monster of a father like in “Rosemary’s Baby.” I knew you could be no ordinary father.
Last year I decided to send for your army records (your death I found when I looked for you in the 80’s) and I got a letter in return saying they were lost in a fire, but I could send for your “Final Pay Voucher” for $20.00, the words on the form strange:
“Requester is: Next of kin of Deceased Veteran, Relationship: Daughter.”
I’ve put her death certificate in a folder with what I have of you, so there you are, together now, and the crease between my brow increases, as it will have to be good enough, these papers, they will have to be what I needed since we fall from ourselves, don’t we?
We fall from grace, a slip of the hip, an apple from the tree, a seed blown loose from the dandelion, until we can define it, put it to paper, bury it or re-classify it and claim names and paper fathers of our own.