By John Moessner

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It contained home movies where he wore
goggle-sized glasses, a toweled shoulder holding
a small redhead at a birthday party, three hours

of ripped paper like static on a radio, the sun flaring
off the ripples of the neighborhood pool. What do
those thieves think of your soccer games,

the Go girl! and the rain that drove him cursing to the car?
What about last Christmas? He was too tired, so you held the
camera instead and closed in on his drooped head

nodding while everyone opened gifts. Would they tear up
thinking of their fathers, would it convince them to call more?
Ripped from your life, just a plastic box in a bag of stuff.

Maybe before wiping it clean, they will browse your home
movies and say, What a good father, what a good life.

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John Moessner received his MFA from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 2018. He works as a legal writer for an immigration law firm. His poems have appeared or will appear in Arts & Letters, Nimrod International Journal, North American Review, Poet Lore, and River Styx.

Originally published in NOR 27.