local_library My Father’s Final Words to Me Were Delivered Via SMS

by Nicolas Miller

Published in Issue No. 240 ~ May, 2017

His messages were often subtle.

He’d hide vinyl copies of Blind Melon

beneath our painkillers like Easter eggs.

 

He’d blast “No Rain”

like a siren while flying

down the interstate

 

and I pretended to sleep

with my earbuds in and forehead flattened

white against the frost-black window.

 

Tonight the hard clouds hiss, and 8-bit snakes

hang from the neon cedar branches.

I play his vinyl like an obituary

 

to the fetal birds that will ascend

and sew him to the waxing moonlight.

 

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Nicolas Miller is a fifth-year senior at Allegheny College. Initially driven to become a career student, his experience as a senior editor for the Allegheny Review has driven him toward more literary ambitions.