I wonder how many puzzles we had figured out together.
Which was the first? The last?
Why didn’t we keep track?
Why did we walk away?
Too busy, maybe. Too old.
I wonder if he would have ever stopped if he thought we hadn’t wanted to;
if even when those morning walks with Jacques became just mustering the will to walk
from one room to the next, and it felt like mile 26 for him,
I wonder if he would have joined us at the kitchen table, if we had asked,
carefully separating the edges from the inside pieces,
before bringing them together around the perimeter of the wooden backing
he had made especially to fit that puzzle’s size.
I wonder if, even then,
he would have sprayed the thing,
when it was all said and done, with that special glue only he seemed to know about,
then, carefully, carefully, bringing it into his garage, and building a frame,
and painting it the perfect hue—matte? speckled? ombre?—
to complement the picture, now in full view,
before hanging it just right in just the right spot in the Blue Room, his room,
alongside all the others we had completed in years past: our legacy.
Maybe not then. but right before then, or until then.
Yes, until then, he would have, if we had asked—yes, of course, girls, yes—
Because even then, when he asked us to, please,
remember the time when he could do anything he wanted,
when he asked us to remember what he used to be,
when he asked us when he stopped being human,
and all we could do was say, “Never,” and “We love you.”
Even then,
he loved us sometimes without a word, but a wink;
he loved us like he had invented love, like there were no limits,
in this way that came from so deep you could trace a line
right back to his neurons and protons and electrons and to every vein and platelet,
or squeeze it out of his bones like lake water from a soaked towel—
he loved us without asking anything in return but a kiss on the cheek
whenever we came and whenever we went—don’t go so soon, girls, don’t go—
He loved us
like time and age were constructed by people who were looking for excuses
to say goodbye—but not him, boy, not him—
because he was always looking to stay.
He was the one who always kept all our pieces together
Even then
Even when it was all said and done
Even—