My fingers would witness to spines while my lips collected dust from the tongues of the idle.

My fingers would witness to spines while my lips collected dust from the tongues of the idle. Tongues that once held great speech now sit in silence behind the rotten teeth of tradition. When I was a young girl I didn’t pay much attention to flowers or the frilly dresses that my sister wore. I watched my father. I watched his teeth and I watched his lips as they sang to the innocent and wretched that lived on our street. He wore a suit with one pocket on the side that was riddled with holes. I would sneak in his study at night with my borrowed needle and thin thread. Sewing. Repairing the holes in my fathers skin. And by the time he came home that night the stitches were cut. The hole was open and all his trinkets had fallen to the ground. He admired my concern for his skin but he admired the people that grabbed the treasures from his pockets even more. He was a man of many words. He was a man with a wife and two daughters. But he was not a man of this world. When my father died they buried him face down. His spine faced the heavens. His humble dried out tongue and cracked lips facing the ground. I left before they placed him in the ground. I never returned to his grave. I spent the rest of my days looking for those trinkets he so willingly dropped. I was the daughter of a man who the world never knew. I was the daughter of a man who had impacted lives without them ever knowing it. My fingers would witness to spines while my lips collected dust from the tongues of the idle.