Lithium, Mine

A poem for my father on his birthday

I freed myself in another language because this one was strangled and diminished, limp   

   Not  finished    but an  affinity     for  hissing    with  tears   in   its  eyes— broken-hearted infant 

Was   I?    With   him     when    he  grabbed       for   tongues   & tones     the  way  we  lift   bunches  of   grass 

    from    its    roots       whe…