Mary

I am still reminded of him by beggars stalking the intersections downtown. I have known my real father to be homeless. Braked at the mouth of my neighborhood’s beltway exit ramp, I hold my breath. I give the vagrant there a discreet peripheral once-over, so as to avoid approach, and I wonder if my father’s hair ever matted so or if the seams of his bedraggled garb ever tore in similar rifts; in silent savagery, the unfurling of a feral being.