I was on the outskirts of Eau Claire when I heard
he had cancer, another seventy miles
and I could have cleared the border, slipped
into St. Paul, backpedaling down the Mississippi
until the following week, when LaCrosse would
wind me closer to him, pin me beneath amber
leaves slipping across blanketed bluffs,
sharp and crisp with the brilliance of fall.

Everywhere I traveled that bitter
autumn kept me by his bedside of metal
coils and ribbons. Back in Chicago, he breathed
heavily, fighting thin oxygen. I never remembered
the name or number of his hospital, just took
the exit instinctively, tolls ready,
always, change in hand.

Everywhere I went that fall, I gathered
receipts. Short-term parking in Wausau
mixed with long-distance lunches in Stevens Point.
At home, I filled out paperwork, played answering
machine messages I didn't know how to repair.
On the road, I ate shrimp and cardboard,
emu in Ashland with nameless,
faceless clients, people I never
wanted to see again, pushing, prodding.
Try the alligator, see how delicious.

I never had a company car before; I never had
the company. My father had a week left, then two.
A month. I kept driving. To live was bitter
cold up north. Green Bay hid underground
tunnels for students, but I preferred to walk
outside. Nights, I made my home in
company-approved hotels. At dusk,
everything looked and tasted the same.
Soon, I could no longer recognize the city.

At 86 pounds, he could no longer talk.
To compensate, I drifted into Milwaukee,
booked a room at the Silver Shuffle or
the Golden Buckle, set aside the expense
account and called up my boyfriend. Tired
of traveling alone, I took him to the East
side, where we danced our way from band
to band. Already hung-over, we stumbled
back to the hotel, stepped over moths
sleeping in hallways, next of kin.

The next out-of-pocket hotel I checked out
first, tested for plastic sheets. Covered with
cigarette burns, we drove south through an ice
storm, spent the next week sleeping upright in
blue plastic hospital chairs, blanketed in neon,
limbs heavy with the sterile, aqua-marine light.

Altitude sickness began to claim us both.
The air in my father's room was dense, perforated
with regret, and I began to wonder if I would ever
surface. America had given me the bends. Already
had she marrowed my father, long since bankrupted
his company, taste for fine women, wine.

And still his hands moved, working their way through
sleep, another set of jobs, nightmares. My stepmother
stands by his side but he doesn't recognize her any
more than he remembers me, can't speak her name
any more clearly than I can speak his. All we can
do now is listen‹listen to the soft wheeze of air
on my father's lips as spittle dries the last silence
between words no longer giving life.