That year, we went ahead. Months
in Madison, my father and I, homesteaders
off the map in a two bedroom rental, unable
to operate a washing machine or solve
the puzzles of conversation, always wrong words,
wrong order without my mother, who stayed behind
until the house sold. There is a way a father can build
a home and career with the same tools and hands
that makes it hard to measure love, even when
standing in the doorframe of a dark bedroom,
his son asleep. It is the distance between two stars
in a constellation or spoons and knives laid side by side
on a kitchen table. Either way, it’s all the same
when measured in silences.
— from Juniper Volume 2, Issue 1