As National Poetry Month comes to an end this week, we offer a new poet every day. 

by Ewen Glass

Her dad wanted them to get back together

and in the hospital room she shares with him the good news, producing her husband with a flourish at just the right moment. Unable to speak, her dad puts a swollen finger in the air, an oversized foam hand at a taping of American Gladiators. She takes his hand, realizes it’s shaking and thinks of the fragile daisy-chains she used to make in his yard. When she leaves the room with her husband an hour later, happiness peels fast at her flank, a flush of insides where her betrayal lives. She wanted to make him happy; now none of it feels right, tricking him, tricking herself. But as she looks back into the room she sees her dad’s finger move in the air: he’s conducting the beeps of bedside machines.

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