Sometimes I dream my father into life,
become an untethered chrononaut
floating backwards to the last day

I held his living frame,
felt the coarse grain of stubble
graze my cheeks, my back wrapped
in the embrace of rough, heavy hands.

I notice more closely the beaded brow,
slight slouch of mountainous shoulders,
hug him fiercely back into an ambulance;

wait for X-rays to light his scrim of flesh,
exposing, within the folded wings of ribs,
a too-large labored heart swollen
by all the love he could not let out in words.

I kiss him and breathe the prayer: “I know,”
look through his blue inscrutable eyes,
and, finally, mean it.