Half-Life
by Kendra Whitfield
When my dad was fifty-six years old,
He walked off the Beverly Bridge and
Into the North Saskatchewan River.
He wrote what he knew on the hearts of the
Women who loved him,
And what he knew was
Vanishment.
He disappeared his whole lifetime.
It’s what his people did.
When my dad was three years old,
His mother abandoned her brood of five and
Their coal-mining, farmer father.
She went to Russia,
She went to Stalin
She went to revolutionize a world she could not change.
When my dad was six years old
She returned.
The writing was already on his heart:
“Disappearance is how you deal with disillusion.”
When my dad was nineteen years old,
He vanished the first time.
Stumbling into darkness after crashing the car
On the way home from a dance,
He enlisted.
Not help, but into an army during a war,
Writing on the heart of the girl who carried his son
That the greatest disillusion is love.
When he was twenty-eight years old,
He came West.
Nothing in his suitcase but sharp knives and
Coal dust.
Whose heart did he engrave with vanishment then?
When I was fourteen,
It was mine.
He walked off the Beverly Bridge and
Into the North Saskatchewan River.
He wrote what he knew on the hearts of the
Women who loved him,
And what he knew was
Vanishment.
He disappeared his whole lifetime.
It’s what his people did.
When my dad was three years old,
His mother abandoned her brood of five and
Their coal-mining, farmer father.
She went to Russia,
She went to Stalin
She went to revolutionize a world she could not change.
When my dad was six years old
She returned.
The writing was already on his heart:
“Disappearance is how you deal with disillusion.”
When my dad was nineteen years old,
He vanished the first time.
Stumbling into darkness after crashing the car
On the way home from a dance,
He enlisted.
Not help, but into an army during a war,
Writing on the heart of the girl who carried his son
That the greatest disillusion is love.
When he was twenty-eight years old,
He came West.
Nothing in his suitcase but sharp knives and
Coal dust.
Whose heart did he engrave with vanishment then?
When I was fourteen,
It was mine.
Kendra Whitfield lives and writes at the southern edge of the Northern Boreal Forest. Her work appears in the Community Building Art Works anthology, We Were Not Alone (November 2021). When not writing, she can be found basking in the sunbeams on the porch or swimming laps at the local pool.