Here is the saddest thing
I know:

That once my dad was not my dad
he was once just a guy
with a shitty apartment
in Charlotte, selling chocolate
to Southerners. A lonely Yankee
carpetbagging candy no true
belle would touch.

That alone with his receiver
he would call late-night DJs, ask
jockeys to play songs, ask them
to play “Sweet
Jane”—the long one, the live
one from Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal—

That he waited
like a man
with all the nuclear codes,
a finger on the button, until
those first sharp
notes rang out.