Transplant
Andrew Kozma
When my dad died, I felt nothing. Both the null and the void.
An absence so clear-cut, I couldn’t remember a presence.
There was nothing there. Nothing was right there. Tears arrived
for the rest, hand delivered. Signed for them. Signed off on them.
I blamed distance, the body I never saw, but the earth
of his ashes follows wherever I go. A coffin I can’t escape.
The moment he died, I thought I felt it. I was hours off.
His heart was dead, a transplant in its place. The mourning crowd
keens in another closed room, behind another door, a different face.