Shann Ray

Your hand on my jaw but gently and that picture of you punching through snow to bring two deer, a gopher, and a magpie to the old Highwalker woman who spoke only Cheyenne and traced our footprints on leather she later chewed to soften. We need to know in America there is still blood for forgiveness. Dead things for the new day.

My four-year-old daughter handed me a card. To Daddy written on the front and inside a rough field of  five-pointed lights, and the words You’re my favorite Daddy in the stars. In this western night we all light the sky like Vega, Deneb, Altair, Albireo, the Summer Triangle, Cygnus the Swan, our hair tangled with wood and gravel, our eyes like vacant docks that beckon every boat. Tell me about the word stars, I said. Oh, she said. Sorry. I didn’t know how to spell world.