Miss Frankenstein

I dig you out of six feet of dirt

Your corpse sits up straight 

Looking for who awakened you

No light in your eye sockets

“I missed you,” I whisper 

Your skeleton looks too thin

“Have you been eating enough?

Is the food any good in heaven?”

//

I add sinew back over your bones as we chat 

“So much has changed 

Since you’ve been gone 

Mom is on a rampage 

She thinks she can find you in some other body”

//

I find your dusty journals and rip out their pages 

I flesh out your trachea 

Soon I can hear the gift of your voice 

I’m sick of reading into the ink

//

We talk about how I hated the new man’s 

Hands on my waist, throwing me into pools

You and I played in 

It hurt 

The water wasn’t supposed to hurt

“How was it that you knew to protect me from gravity?”

I didn’t learn to be afraid of falling

Until you couldn’t catch me anymore

//

How did I forget that this was the love slipping 

From my memories when even time desecrates you?

You say you have no idea but you’ve missed me too

//

I build the muscle around you with an empty

Cologne bottle that smelled like your arms’ embrace

My hands rub knots out of your tense back

You say, “this coffin is not as comfortable

As it used to be”

I listen to your complaints

And joys of your ghostly neighbors

Aleah’s baby sister likes to play with you

But she misses her family

“She’s what, eight now?”

You say, “Her mom would love to see

How big she’s getting”

//

You help me puzzle back your body

Into a mummy of jackets and baseball caps and

The one stuffed koala you got from Australia

The old bins smell like time and our home

In Idaho Falls but I pretend that means it’s you

//

You tell me I live too far away and

“How come you only ever visit me on my birthday?”

“Dad, I’m an adult now, I can’t make the trip as often

And it takes time to build you back up”

//

You smile with the same dimples I pressed

Into your fresh cheeks

They always match the pictures

Your joints creak like the lid I built you from

The weight of your kids sitting

On your knees in home videos

There’s always laughter and the sound of

Reckless giggling only kids know how to make

//

In my memories you’re bouncing on a yoga ball

With Hannah while Simon barked happily 

“He’s here somewhere,” you remind me,

“He’d love to play fetch with you again”

//

I’m concerned about your organs

Every year they have been fed the same

Fudge and circus peanuts

Mom said they were your favorite so

It’s the only things I knew to bring 

“Can you tell me what other things you like?” 

And you say you’re feeling a little hazy

//

It’s hard to fill in the cracks 

The papers we didn’t preserve 

The years that you stopped

Leaving behind mementos

//

Your brain is half-made

The breaks in your skull hard to piece together

Why didn’t you write more?

Building your personality would be easier 

If I had more of you to work with

//

You smile in response like a picture

Always like your pictures

I’m sick of the way you only look like pictures

I don’t know what you’d say to that

So you say nothing at all

“I’m sorry I’m not the best of scientists,” I tell you 

As your body slowly starts to disintegrate

//

I pinch the pieces and sew them with more objects 

Papers you wrote,

Pens you liked,

Trinkets you kept

Treats stuffed in your pockets

Just a little more

He’s almost here

Memories get blurry the more I recall them

I don’t want to start

Making a body that doesn’t act like you

//

“I’m scared you’ll wake up and I won’t know you”

A secret of mine you’ll take to your grave

“It’s okay, sweetie,” you might tell me if I could remember your voice

You’re fading from my grasp

What if you don’t recognize me

I love you 

It’s one of the things I try to keep the same

// 

I change the bouquet of dead flowers with dying ones

Today’s your fourteenth anniversary in this place

“Goodnight Dad, I can’t keep you alive much longer”

It won’t stop me from trying

Again next year