I’d come alone to carry on the search for father.
The institutional building where the search took place
was labyrinthine—there were many stairwells
and many doors to offices and apartments
in the stairwells. But this was where they’d told me
he would be. I entered a kind of vestibule area, where
many people crowded. At first, I seemed to know
where to look, but soon I got waylaid—at one point
in a restaurant-kitchen area, at another at a doctor’s
waiting room. An attractive, young bi-racial girl
passed by and told me that she too was looking
for her father. I followed her, but lost her amongst
another hubbub of people. I was still unhurried
and certain where I’d find my father. I imagined
him with a woman, charming her or already
engaged in sex. At this point, I asked a woman
in the corridor whether she’d seen a stocky,
muscular black man with a certain air about him,
and realised I was describing someone the woman—
a middle-aged black woman—would likely have found
irresistible. It struck me I should have mentioned
his advanced age. Later, I was sure I saw him at
the top of a stairwell, talking with a woman. I was
certain now I’d reach him. I went up the stairwell
where I thought he’d be, but was confronted with
door after door, one looking like another. I listened
at a door where I thought I heard voices—a woman
with a whining voice that could have been my mother’s.
But the door was not an entrance—it was some sort
of exit or back entrance. I continued up the winding
staircase until I was out on the street, and looked upon
row after row of multi-coloured doors to different
offices, houses and apartments. I realised then that
it was hopeless. I’d have to go back to the beginning.
– from A MORE PERFECT UNION: A SERIAL POEM (forthcoming)
