Father and son talk

Each with bellies full of shots,

and you with volleys of words,

spilling out like furnaced steel.

Yet your neat distillations

of the stories we survived

seem never to scotch your tongue.

There are bright, molten splashes

as your words become heated –

eyes that had glowed, glowering.

Yet what terrifies me now

is how far from what happened

this truth you keep forging lies.

Tomorrow, our talk will cool,

and we’ll remain misshapen,

despite all these straighteners.