wildscape. literary journal

Rattle
by LC Gutierrez

What is the baby’s sex? they asked
while I thought of holes poked in the sky.

I dreamt her standing on my foreshortened shoulders. 
Me lifting up, up, up, and grace dropping 

piñata-like, tangling in her silk-kissed hair.
Until I stumbled once carrying her horsey-back

deep night dark and I’d stepped off a sidewalk,
my grip slack on her tiny ankles.

There’s no way to catch a toddler falling 
behind you. Only some angel who saved her

neck from snapping on the curb.
An angel shaking its head (I imagined)

and thinking this is no kind of father.
I fear I’ll pass my fractures on to her yet

unsinned head, like a congenital disease
while falling shorter for her every day.

When I pretend to help her read the kiddie menu
I ogle the cocktail waitress half my age

and think there’s still some stupid in me
that won’t just have a biscuit and shut the fuck up.

I worry not that I will die, but when she goes 
that I’ll have failed: a father who fades and keeps

for him the deep and gut-punched love 
she’ll leave behind like a forgotten pod.

There’s no way to go until we’ve wounded,
or been wounded by, one we love.

about the author // LC Gutierrez