The Weight of Steel

My father never cried,

not when his own father died.

I watched him,

trying to learn the shape of that held-back grief,

the architecture of what was buried deep.

Then yesterday, my son,

his jaw just a little tight,

flinching from a neighbor’s careless slight.

"Too sensitive," the man had said,

watching him play with dolls instead

of something rough and loud.

I saw my father in that boy's stiff stance,

the same heavy price,

a crushing, cold device.

The cost of being a man, you see,

is locking up the real part of thee.