gathering is a photo of me
in flip-flops atop the roof
of my childhood home
holding a rake to the sky
my brother says I did not
recognize that was you
my sister says wow you are
actually doing manual labor
and in my mind I know
that was the morning after
M stayed over when
I was visiting from LA and
I had just finished raking
grimy blackened leaves off
the roof that gathered in
the years since Dad died
but it’s true he made me
hate the yard and stressed
the lawn as living in a filth
we’d have to fix and every
few days in the summer
he’d place the red mower
outside the shed waiting
for me to kill the grass in
diminishing rectangles
(originally published in Rat’s Ass Review, Fall 2020)