A billfold-sized black and white picture of my mother and father from the late ‘40s. It’s yellowed and scalloped around the edges. My dad is lanky and has a smouldering edge with his white T-shirt and Burt Lancaster trousers. My mom in a polka-dot frock, cuban-heel stockings and a snood. One arm around his waist, the other stretched out from her right side like a heron wing—Jack Kerouac and Rita Hayworth.
 
Lovers squint into
the brilliant winter
sun of 1942.
 
After we moved from small town Tennessee to Chicago, my father worked as an industrial engineer at Sears on the 44th floor of what was at the time the tallest skyscraper in the US. I hitchhiked across America, dropping out of college every other semester, and became fixated on Jack Kerouac. Not for his prose, but for his poetry. I loved to look at Jack. He was hot! It took years to make a connection between the early picture of my Dad and my crush on Kerouac.
 
Senior year sex
on the Volkswagen floor.
Muscles lit by streetlights.
 
By the time I was a teen, Dad looked misshapen and creepy—The Hunchback of Notre Dame in a plaid business suit. I looked forward to him disappearing on the commuter train and was glad when he took the late train back. I still ask, who was the boy-man in the snapshot? Who were my parents before I came along, obsessed with each other and eager to begin the journey? Maybe they were in love at some point, but my sister says they were just in lust.  
 
Loretta Lynn on the car radio.
Sings nothing cold as ashes
after the fire is gone.