The night before I turned 51

I dreamed my father next to me

holding my hand through a parking lot,

his full cheeked smile held inside

those radiating parentheses reaching

out like endless arms from his eyes—

like mine in the brightest sunlight,

caught laughing in a rearview mirror.

(I learned to love my smile by loving his.)

We walked like this toward some store

I wanted to avoid, so he wouldn’t feel

he had to buy me something, the coat

I wanted, or some other ephemeral

thready thing to make up for a lifetime

of missing him, missing him, missing him.

I rehearsed in my mind what I wanted

him to know: I forgive you every day.

I woke before I said it, distracted by

a gallery of Japanese woodcut prints,

one of them a curious face watching us

pass as I noticed us drift across glass.