Poem 22

I did not post last week in honor of spring break and the fact that I was out of town.
This poem took shape recently, but it's based on a story I heard from my friend Rachel a few years ago. I changed a few things to keep it a bit anonymous and because I can't remember too many specifics aside from the Post-it notes and the fact that the family involved still found them years later.
3M corporation, maker of Post-It brand sticky notes, may kick my ass for this one.

Knowing Him

When I opened the fridge
after school that day
to grab a can of pop,
I found yellow Post-Its
stuck to the milk carton, the OJ,
the ketchup,
the three-year-old cans of beer.
Taking one off the crisper door,
I read the note
in red-colored pencil:
“The truth will come out.”
That was the last thing Dad told me
because we never saw him again.

Those little yellow slips
covered the house like feathers
of some molting bird.
He stuck them to the piano bench,
the TV, the clock,
Mom’s employee-of-the-year plaque.
Each of the pictures in the hall
had a paper veil
and the doors to all the rooms.
He did not stick one to my bedroom lamp,
but there were two on shirts
that hung in my closet.
My sister had 15 on her dresser alone.
156 total, we thought.

We didn’t know what the truth was
or how long Dad had planned to leave the notes
before packing a small bag with all his socks
and one shirt
and driving off to wherever he went.
Maybe if I listened better,
while he talked about
how each of our atoms
was God,
he wouldn’t have left.
Maybe if Mom hadn’t been so mad
when he bought into
a buffalo ranch in Oregon,
he would have come back
and told us it was a joke.

Even today, and it’s been four years,
we find truth coming out
in brittle, yellow glimpses,
stuck to the bottom of drawers
and the bottoms of shoes
in closets since ’87.
On the back of the smoke detector,
Between books on the third,
but not fourth, shelf,
Behind the mirror in the hall:
like a textbook diagram
showing prepositions.

I wonder what we’ll do
when we find the last one.