My Book Had Come Undone

because I’d deemed the book complete,
the last pages written, end notes done.
Because the pages seemed armored
against me. Needful of nothing. Smug.
Because a day passed. Because I got a call;
a heart had faltered. The person the protagonist
was drawn on: gone. Because it was
my father. Because was. Because my father is,
in the book, alive. Because alive now seems a lie.
Death, the missing letter. Because his heart
pumps through the pages’ veins, through
trees felled for their pulp. Because art
can’t match life’s stride, or death’s.
Because my book has shorter legs.
Because it lags like a video streamed
on unstable internet. Because I couldn’t
finish the bowl of chicken soup I’d started
before the call. Because my father’s flesh was warm
when I heated the broth. Because I thought
of the chicken my father saw as a pet, as a child.
Because he learned it wasn’t. Because he ate it,
learned, then cried. Because I need to edit.
Because death is absent, but death is
the absence that can’t be revised.