My father stuffed his grief inside a glass jar

until it looked like a charred umbilical cord.

 

Then I watched him walk down a gray pier

and toss it into the faded brass-colored waters of the bay.

 

That same night, an angel appeared in my bedroom.

It had no wings and its face was polished as black as a ruby.

 

It pointed me to a blinking streetlight

and told me telepathically that it was a message

from my mother from the other side.

 

Then it showed me a cabinet full of ghosts cut in half like ants.

 

After I finished counting them all,

the being disappeared. And all I was left with were its mask

and the sound of the night being given back its blood.