Dad

Citadel
grey mountain
salted snow
face low
turned to earth
sitting on the hospital bed

emptying eye sockets
reckoning your father's path
shaking freckles off the hands
seeking the lost phone charger
watching your body swallow your mind

the gentle skin on your bare head
kissed
bramble brush beard and hair

Liver, heart, legs
But the mind is the master
The "Godzilla" you lost to

Flashes
and figuring it out
blinking out
just in time

You were iron
impossible
incorrigible

child

dead in a tired, old man's body.