Sebastián H. Páramo
THE LOST PORTRAIT
In the last room of life, you’ll find me
still wandering into mirrors.
I’m shaving my Father’s chin
because it belongs to me.
Except his body isn’t mine.
I don’t want my father’s eyes.
I want to stop watching my nightmare
empty my sockets
with my father’s blade.
My brother’s mother’s gun pointed
in this direction. Reading headlines,
stray bullets hit unsuspecting sleepers.
I’m sick & afraid of seeing death everywhere.
Frankly, I don’t want to know
what my father used to do at night.
Not when he never told me growing up
where he was—my mother doubts
his business, calls him a vagabond.
Tell me I’m an exiled son,
walking dumbly
across the street after dark.
I’ll tell you, there’s a future where we never talk.
Make me an old man, a feeble one.
I’ll tell you, there’s a cabin in the forest.
East Texas has plenty of those.
My father disappeared there.
After years of calling his bluff,
we finally found him—alone.
The cabin was a prison.
It became the last recording of us together.
We ate the same breakfast together.
Then there’s one day I can’t picture us sitting there one day.
Maybe because I suddenly became old enough
to find an old acquaintance buying me a drink
at the airport. Do you ever wonder if you’re bonding
because we’re grieving dead fathers?
It’s nice to have something in common
with someone you want to love.
Because you’re falling for each other,
talking about arthritic knees &
self-care routines, you find yourself
already drawing your lover
a bath because you’ve both agreed
scrubbing your filthy legs together
is the most intimate thing you can do.
Exfoliating all the dead skin,
you let the soapy water turn gray,
& you sit there with that person.
Release that tension.
For years you both lived with chronic pain,
searching for someone who was or wasn’t
like your parents. Larkin said they fuck you
up & you can’t help laughing.
You want to cry. You want to take gasoline
from the shed for all the machines your father kept.
You’ve wanted to take a light
& let reason die. Except that’s not real;
you have all the reason in the world
to want destruction. Yearning,
the garbage bin throws up
giant orange destruction.
All responsibility becomes yesterday
& this is your future burning brightly,
like a shooting pain, flashing across the sky.
Sebastián H. Páramo is the author of the forthcoming collection Portrait of Us Burning (Curbstone Books, 2023). His work has appeared in New England Review, the Academy of American Poets' Poem-A-Day series, Split Lip, Bennington Review, and elsewhere. He is the Founding Editor of The Boiler, Poetry Editor for Deep Vellum, and a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Austin College in Sherman, TX.