Yusef Komunyakaa

My Father’s Love Letters 

On Fridays he’d open a can of Jax
After coming home from the mill,
& ask me to write a letter to my mother
Who sent postcards of desert flowers
Taller than men. He would beg,
Promising to never beat her
Again. Somehow I was happy
She had gone, & sometimes wanted
To slip in a reminder, how Mary Lou
Williams’ “Polka Dots & Moonbeams”
Never made the swelling go down.
His carpenter’s apron always bulged
With old nails, a claw hammer
Looped at his side & extension cords
Coiled around his feet.
Words rolled from under the pressure
Of my ballpoint: Love,
Baby, Honey, Please.
We sat in the quiet brutality
Of voltage meters & pipe threaders,
Lost between sentences . . .
The gleam of a five-pound wedge
On the concrete floor
Pulled a sunset
Through the doorway of his toolshed.
I wondered if she laughed
& held them over a gas burner.
My father could only sign
His name, but he’d look at blueprints
& say how many bricks
Formed each wall. This man,
Who stole roses & hyacinth
For his yard, would stand there
With eyes closed & fists balled,
Laboring over a simple word, almost
Redeemed by what he tried to say.

This piece is not what comes to mind when one thinks of a love letter, I thought as I read the line “promising never to beat her again.”

but what constitutes a love letter?

how can you say, ‘this is not about love”.

WE are taught that love is unconditional, that love is everlasting and that it is through our faults that love can end and that you can never, ever get it back.

but sometimes, isn’t loving something in passing, loving something that you know cannot stay just as beautiful as loving something constant?

isn’t loving something fleeting more?

more and more involved, for you are in love with them and their journey and what they were, are, and will be?

isn’t this stronger?