I.
Your father was born
when the doctors told him
he was going to die.
His terminal existence
made him honest, forced him
to believe in habitable planets
where it would not have turned out
like this.
He was filled with faulty
wiring. It was a mistake with the mechanics
that forced him to give in
and believe in
higher-ups.
II.
You turned on the television
as your father’s body burned
in the background.
There, you had decided
it was not a cosmic
coincidence or an illusion of chance
that you had seen
the universe attempting to make sense
of itself
in the permanently repeating pattern
within the metallic, coarse
covering of the pangolin’s exterior.
