ARIGHT, GIMME FIVE!

For my dad, in June

We still lived in the townhouse.

I was ten
maybe eleven—

that age between
elementary school
and whatever comes next.

You were in your early 30’s

An age I now know
is younger than it sounds.

Still, you were already a father.

My father.
A father of two.

We were pulling into the driveway.

You reached for the mailbox
the way you always did—

driver’s seat,
arm out the window.

There was something for me.

Mom was there.
Matt was there.

I was in the back seat
on the passenger side.

But when I remember it now,

I only remember you.

I think you asked
if I wanted to open it.

I handed it back.

You read.

Sheena Vega,

Congratulations on your acceptance
to Middle School of the Arts—

Before you finished,

you shouted:

ARIGHT, GIMME FIVE!

For reasons I can no longer explain,

I wanted Kentucky Fried Chicken.

So we got it.

Drumsticks dipped
into mashed potatoes,

eaten in the car,

the whole world suddenly
exactly right.

To this day

it remains one of the best days
of my life.

Not because I got in.

Because I made you proud.

And I knew it.

Not knew—

felt it.

Now I’m forty,
going on forty-one.

You’re sixty-one,
going on sixty-two.

It’s a strange thing,
being a daughter.

You spend years wanting
to make your father proud.

Then life asks something else of you.

To choose yourself.

To leave the road he imagined.

To follow the one
calling your name.

Life turns out to be short.

Short enough that a mailbox,
a letter,

a paper bucket of chicken,

can survive decades.

Short enough that love
can fit inside a single, shouted sentence.

ARIGHT, GIMME FIVE!

And even now,

when I hear it,

part of me still reaches
for your hand.

While the rest of me

keeps walking

toward my own yes.