Elegy for David in Yellowstone National Park

There is a kitchen stocked
with a sous vide, smoker, thermometers
for candy and meat, shelves of books and binders
of recipes, and all the food
is rotting. There is a dark- 
room with pungent chemicals, opaque
negatives and photographs like prayer flags pinned 
to a line. Sue Grafton dies
and the alphabet stops
its tour through crime
and intrigue. I discover letters
addressed to him, and do not read them.
He had a life before
I was born, a wife and a career
in a different state. I only knew him
as my father, a paper-doll role
that absolved me of knowing
him in any real detail.
I play his voicemails
on repeat, memorize
the cadence, clutch the love I find
in his words. Memory is insufficient.
I wish I could tell him 
about my new car,
how it slid on ice
and for a moment I forgot
what I was supposed to do,
felt like a leaf on the surface
of a rushing stream. 
And I would’ve cried as I said it, detailed
my anxiety as an acid
in my stomach, throat as I wondered
about the wreckage,
but then my wheels found
traction and the car pulled forward, and my hands
trembled. A miracle. I was silent
the rest of the way home. When
he taught me how to drive, he set me free
in a parking lot, pointed
out which pedal 
stops and which goes, and waited
while I discovered 
motion. On the side of the road
at Yellowstone, I see a buffalo
and think of what would’ve been
his awed intake of breath, take one myself.