Poem-a-Day

What if I told you he wasn’t that bad? 
That you couldn’t smell it on his breath 
after all, & that he wasn’t one of the loud ones 
the way he is in all my poems? Not at all 
like the viral headlines made him seem? What if 
I told you he smiled in PTA meetings & never spoke first? 
That he sat on the sidelines at little league games 
& laughed with other parents? That he loves to sink 
his soft hands into soil & clip the crisped 
edges of dog-tongue rhododendron leaves because 
they make him feel small? What if I told you 
he sits in church basements with other white-whiskered 
men to talk about how proud they all are of their 
gay sons? & the whirling manic I cartoon him to be 
in line at the rehab hospital, or barking through 
car windows with an open Sauv Blanc bottle 
cinched between his khakis—what if I said 
that was all mostly for me?