(after Burn Your Maps)

Pumpernickel bagels and my snide wife make me seasick,
a nervous burning of the gut,
an acidic drip.

(“Tougher and stronger every day,” she mocks when I return from kick boxing,
wet with loathing.)
She said a family is a map,

but mine is broken by water.
My father hides across a sea of vices and lies—
it stings of alcohol and the only person
ever to cross was my son—
my wife beckons from across river, shallow
but teeming with carnivorous fish,
and across an insane ocean,
my son shelters himself
in a Discovery Channel portrait of far away.
I would love to tug the rough straps
of an orange life jacket,
climb in a row boat and go,
but my dad never gave me kind words or canoeing trips. The sailboat of home
rocks too much to hold on.
So I wait on a slick shore,
watching their distant figures
fade into a cold fog.