The Maynard
Fall 2020

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My father’s house has many rooms; I am going there to prepare a place for you

My father’s father has six boys, and how they cost him. My father’s
father teaches my father to recite the our father, glory be to the father,
in the father’s house where forgiveness is found and unfounded. My father’s

father sends my father away and it costs him, my father,
his boyhood. My father never forgives his father. My father,
already a father, not yet my father, leaves his home, his father’s

home, and it costs him. My father’s father never forgives my father
for leaving. My father has a trinity of girls and so we cost him double. My father
doesn’t teach me the our father but I learn it anyway, forgive me father, forgive me father.

My father’s house has many rooms. Raising his hands to the high roof, my father
says, can’t you see what this cost me? My father sends me back home to see his father
though it costs him. In my father’s father’s house all I want is to go back home to my father.

In my father’s father’s father’s house I say the our father
and it costs me. Cannot say, forgive me father, though my father’s
father says, it costs you nothing. My father’s father returns to his father,

goes to prepare a place for us. My father
goes home to see his father, finds him gone home to his father
and this is what leaving has cost him. I leave home and say forgive me father

for leaving, for wanting a baby immaculate. My father
knows not forgiving will cost him, knows his father, his father’s father
would never forgive me, says there’s nothing to forgive. It costs me nothing, says my father.