You are nothing if not pendulum:
you scream-coarse my nerves raw,
then teach me the delicious strain
of an over-filled heart.
If I am fire, you cool.
If I am freeze, you thaw.
You do this while doing almost nothing.
All you tend to achieve
is sleep and breathe.
Existence
is ample cause to love.
Even if you did not smile, squirm or coo,
or never calmed, nor stared askew,
I would still have no choice
but to love you.
Some little understood - under-studied - tug,
an elemental force like weak or strong nuclear,
but less clinical, more crucial.
Textbook,
but novel;
biographical fantasy:
you are a story unto yourself,
a book I will never put down
(don’t even let me pause).
You share space but own your own:
full sentence, also clause.
Yours is the only friendship I anticipated
but the only stranger I have ever truly loved.
Do not let me become
too familiar.
But keep making me family,
keep making me -
through the early-human ways,
the crumbling into my shoulder,
the piercing gray-blue gaze
as clear as perfect water -
keep making me
your father.