I begin where you left off,

I begin where you left off,

By Sean Mitchell

I begin where you left off,
Wearing your heart on my shin
And my forearm.
My mother said she dreamed of you until I arrived.
Every good thing is a transformation;
A metamorphosis.
When your mother lost you,
The whales, great spirits of the sea,
Were the only answer,
And then I got here and I knew.
I knew their songs and their patterns.
I was you in the deep blue of it all, somehow,
Come back to say, “Sorry.”
“I didn’t mean it.”
You couldn’t speak to her, and I could.
I could bring back the innocence and your hair.
I could look at her with a love she had lost forever.
Then there is my father.
His brother was an angel as far as I know.
He was not from here, and not from there,
And died anywhere in America.
His hat “smelled like cigarettes and rain.”
The gunshot stiffens, and my grandfather
Could never tell me.
Uncle, in you, I am.
I am being woven and you are the yarn,
The wool. The love of God.