Another lol

I have a tiny fish with flowering fins named Nuke

When...it's one of my favorite words. You wonder why its not something more exotic, like leviathan or euphonic. But feel it in your mouth and imagine there is a yearning person behind it. Imagine all types of yearning people behind it, yearning for different things.

Imagine my father - his bushing eyebrows in arc like my own, they rise and wrinkle his forehead. Just imagine his mouth moving to the word Cuando! in a faked Mexican accent, stereotyped and comical. It was the only word in Spanish he knew for a long time, and he didn't know what it meant or why it needed to be said; he only knew that it added something definite and emphasized. He liked the word in his mouth and the sound it produced. And when he said it, his yellow tooth showed. The fake one that replaced the one he knocked out long ago when he was twelve, when the front tire came off of his bike and when he landed face-first on the pavement. He could take this tooth and the retainer it was attached to out. He washed it with his hands and showed us the dark, imperfect hole it left in his smile.

I like to hear my father say this word. For him it is a statement. A command. Now is when. And when is always. And this is the way I hold the ones I love. The way I try to love the ones I hold.

§

"Night-time is for the boy who can fly."
and who can fly
not me not them
he's in the dream
where I touched your shoulder
felt the dew of your skin
the freshness of your flight