By Sonia Sanchez With exact wings Your words sailed back into your throat. Could not fly forward. Your mouth face startled by this autumn Thunder went south again. I had forgotten the salute of death, how it waits Militarily on the outskirts of our skin. I had forgotten how death howls inside our veins. O father, how much like a child again I felt as I ran down doctors painted on porcelain corridors. O My father, as I breathed inhaled for us both, I began to sing a song you sang when I was little without a poet's name, Afraid of all the shadows cremating my bones, Remember the nite, The nite you said I love you remember... I remembered your voice swollen in a ritual of words on 152nd Street and St. Nicholas Place. Now I, daughter of applause, hands waterlogged with memory, asked for nothing more as I circled your hospital room, sequined with our breaths in an hour-glass of sound.