Sine Qua Non

Your absence, father, is nothing. It is nought—

The factor by which nothing will multiply,

The gap of a dropped stitch, the needle’s eye

Weeping its black thread. It is the spot

Blindly spreading behind the looking glass.

It is the startled silences that come

When the refrigerator stops its hum,

And crickets pause to let the winter pass.

Your absence, father, is nothing—for it is

Omega’s long last O, memory’s elision,

The fraction of impossible division,

The element I move through, emptiness,

The void stars hang in, the interstice of lace,

The zero that still holds the sum in place.