By the ankles
he would hold me
at the end
of the long, white pier.
“Don’t fall in,”
he would say.
“Whatever you do,
don’t fall in.”
His enormous,
generous hands
gripped my small legs
and he’d dangle
my sun-bleached hair
toward the water
till it dipped in the lake
and began to drip.
“Don’t fall in,”
I’d be squealing by now,
not out of any real fear,
more with the thrill
of being held at the edge,
knowing there was not
a thing I could do to save
myself, nor was there any
real danger. God,
he was strong.
And big. And so full
of love. And play.
“Don’t fall in,”
he would say,
the release me.
The water always colder
than I’d want it to be.
I’d come up all splutter
and dripping, somewhere
between happiness
and surrender. I’d clamber
back up the old wooden ladder
and beg him to do it again.
What did I know then of falling?
It is not the falling that hurts.
It’s the landing that can be so awful.
Tear of skin, fracture of bone,
terrible thud of flesh. He taught me
the joy of falling when it ended
in a splash.
I come to tell Dad I’m falling.
This time it is by my own hand.
I am falling even now
at the table where we sit.
Falling through the water glass.
Falling through the words as they fall
from my lips. Falling through lies I told.
He offers me his thick fingers, his enormous palm,
still so much bigger than my own.
He reaches for me. I am falling.
He would catch me if he could.
What do I know of falling?
I fall right through his hands.
