By Jess Whetsel
I did not learn your name
until I was a teenager. It was
an accident, a slip of another
relative’s tongue, something
I wasn’t supposed to hear –
or at least not from their lips:
my secret grandfather,
the villain of the family story.
The rest came later, in pieces.
You left because you fell in love
with a man after three children
with your wife. You left because
you could no longer pretend
you were the man you claimed to be.
But I am the author of the family
and I am rewriting this story.
You left because you had
the audacity to choose yourself.
I doubt my father meant to
keep his queer daughter
from her only living queer kin,
but that is what he did. And now
you are dead, your ashes interred
in a scenic cemetery states away
from this hole in my heart and
the corn fields and country roads
you left behind. But that is not all you left.
When I miss you the most, I look
in the mirror. Here is your Mona Lisa
smile on my mouth, your blunt-tipped
nose on my face. I place my hand on
my heart and feel the swagger of your
footsteps. I reach out, skin on silver,
to stroke the arch of your cheekbone.
No one can take you from me.
You are still here because I am
still breathing, and I promise
you will not be erased.
Jess Whetsel is a poet, writer, editor, and public speaker based in Toledo, Ohio on Erie, Kickapoo, Seneca, and Odawa land. Her poetry has appeared in the literary journals Tulip Tree Review and Discretionary Love. You can learn more about Whetsel and her work on her website, or by following her Instagram, @jesswhetselwrites.
