Today my father told me
about a cat that lives in the ceiling
and the time a satellite fell to earth in El Paso, right at his feet.
The cat, I know, is fiction,
but the satellite could be true.
Or partially true, a newspaper article mistaken for biography.
I could solve mystery with a little effort,
but the conversation was effort enough.
He mistook me for my sister, then told me stories about myself.
I was tense, unwilling to hear what he said about me behind my back.
But he told me things I already knew,
that I let the little things bother me,
that I could have been a little more easygoing in this life.
We circled back to his time working in the gravel pit,
the way he bossed his boss around,
the smart things his smart mouth said
that got him into or out of trouble.
At the end of the call, he said
You’ve always been the easiest one to talk to
and I didn’t know if he meant me or someone else.
Heidi Slettedahl is a poet and novelist, in that order, and a wife, dog mom and academic, also in that order.
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