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?
Copyright © 2026 by Adam Falkner. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 21, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.