Jonathan Johnson-Swagel

When I get to the end,
do not make me useful.

Do not bring the form.
Do not lift the sheet
to see what I produced.
Do not ask whether the brightness
was worth the room it cost.

I have been bright for wages.

I have sat under the white hum
and taught my kindness
to move through approvals.
I have routed mercy.
I have initialed the clause
where the human thing
went missing.

All my life I mistook survival
for speed.

In that house, love was a door
with weather in it.
The mirror said translate.
The room said smaller.

So I became legible.
Then excellent.
Then necessary.
Then tired.

There was always a field
I did not give away.

Not large.
Not on any map.
A hidden acre
behind the tongue,
behind the work face,
behind the good son,
behind the child
learning which parts of himself
could cross a room alive.

Bless the acre.
Bless the locked gate.
Bless the animal lying there
that would not become language.

Across the joining land,
Effie was not blood
and was therefore mercy.

My father went into the ground
with years still folded in him.
I have been older than him
in rooms where no one knew.

An empty chair followed me
through offices, airports, museums,
beside the lake when the weather
turned the water
the color of a closed eye.

Sometimes I resented the living
for continuing.

Sometimes I built a kingdom
out of being right.
I wanted tenderness
and arrived with evidence.
I called it truth
when it was armor.

Let the record show
the record was incomplete.

It kept the badge,
not the body.

Say throat.
Say tooth.
Say lower back.
Say bile.
Say bone ache.
Say the body kept making me stand
while I accused it
of betrayal.

Iron. Calcium. D.
The alphabet of remaining.

I wanted to forgive the body
after treating it
like a servant
ashamed to need care.

When I get to the end,
do not bring the grand version.

Not the genius.
Not the survivor.
Not the public sentence
with its clean little lantern.

Bring the chipped bowl,
the spoon in the sink,
the coffee gone cold
while I was elsewhere again,
drafting a self
a narrow world might praise.

Bring the tenor note
before it breaks.

Bring the blackbird on the reed
wearing fire
like something it did not ask for.

I wanted recognition
the way a field wants morning:

light
without negotiation.

But I have also feared the eye.

The eye takes inventory.
The eye edits.
The eye asks for access
then calls the locked door
a symptom.

I learned to smile
at the threshold.
I learned to give enough
to seem generous
and keep enough back
to remain.

This was not deception.
This was weatherproofing.

When I get to the end,
look for the place
I would not sell.

It may be small by then.
A drawer.
A field mouse.
A room with no window.
The inside of a closed hand.
The word no
sleeping under the word yes.

I was extracted
by gentler names.

Opportunity.
Leadership.
Fit.

Each one held the door
while something left me.

I made myself fluent
in rooms that did not deserve
my translation.

Once, I saw a room
not harvest
the ones who entered it.

But I have known
the other rooms:

where grief signs nothing
and owns everything.

When I get to the end,
I want no verdict.

Let the mind stop running
the horse to foam.
Let me unfasten
the old proof
from my chest.

Maybe nobody is waiting.

Maybe the dead have work
of their own.
Maybe my father is not young
or laughing.
Maybe he is only
a silence in work boots,
turning once
at the edge of the road.

Still, I will look.

I will look for every grandmother
by blood or mercy.
I will look for the child
before translation.

I do not know
whether he will forgive me.

He may be under the table.
He may be in the weeds.
He may be holding
the small lamp
I thought I had carried.

He may say nothing.

He may only open his hand
and show me
what I kept alive
by hiding it.

The hidden acre
still hidden.

The gate standing.

The lamp warm.

The key
with no copy.