Bellowing

My father is in my skin. He’s in my muscles & 
bones, the weight of him, the sureness,
the spine, the place to lean into.

I face into dying the same way he did,
the bellows of our lungs compressing,
and I, too, shoulder into it.

His strength was my loss, my fear, my lament;
now his ghost teaches how my strength,
too, has kept me quiet, locked away

the possibility of being seen:
that fragile core, that underbelly,
that need.