Poem for the Last Time We Saw Our Father

by Kathy Key-Tello

We stayed awake until four every morning

that summer we spent in Jamestown. Waited

until fireflies fizzled out & breezes pressed fingers

of trees against double-paned windows—my

sister loved those Degrassi reruns.

 

It was the fourth night. I brushed my teeth

underneath a flickering bulb & my sister creaked

across floorboards to say a ghost unplugged her

charger. I believed her. We were afraid being

in the middle of nowhere, there were ticks &

 

chiggers & God knew what else. We killed

the light and crawled shivering into bed & I

heard it. Creaking. I peered at the closed door,

watched it open and Nothing powered up

my camera on the nightstand, pinged buttons

 

that flicked though pictures. I would not believe

but my sister was there. Nothing looked at evidence

of my life and when finished respectfully turned

the camera off. That dew-frosted morning I rose,

walked across a dusty field to pay respect the empty

barn where our father died.


Kathy Key-Tello is a graduate of the University of Houston undergraduate creative writing program where she received the Provost's Prize for Creative Writing in Prose. She is the former Editor-in-Chief of Glass Mountain, and her work can be found online and in print with Crack the Spine, the tiny journal, and elsewhere. Currently, Kathy lives in Arkansas and she has a beautiful bunny.

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Being an introverted couple is hard especially when you’re invited to parties and you don’t really wanna go but you don’t wanna seem rude so you say yes anyway