trick of the hand

I think of him like an amputation: an appendage I can’t depend on or a buried hand that will never hold more than infection.

It’s hard to decide if I have been abandoned or if I gave in first.

But most of the time it’s too much to consider so instead I dream of smoking yellow suns or green lights or salt whites.

And I wonder if my hand was salted and burned or buried beneath guilt and shame. I try to remember the handful of times I saw him.

In one picture dedicated to his only daughters, he misspelled my name and people say my mother misspelled it first.

Jerney Harms Class of 2023