Everything looks exactly the same. I can’t
tell the difference between what I hold

in each hand—screwdriver, wrong screwdriver—
all scattered on the kitchen floor, the parts

cracked jagged keep leaking. Your father
should’ve taught you this, he says, reaching for what is,

I guess, a flathead. He once dreamt he was
a speck of dust on the doorknob of his childhood
 
home, until some hand turned the handle, so,
unaffixed, then gathered, he was carried past

the keyhole, where he maybe glimpsed
my grandma one last time before he woke,

cheek pressed to the carpet. Do you ever
stop yourself, he shifts his weight, his body now older

than his mother’s and father’s will ever be,
and father’s too, from calling your dad

on the telephone? I’d like to
make my hand a valve he could fasten

into place. He wipes his forehead, palms the guts
of the machine. We stay kneeling. The last time

he was here, he was also
on his knees, helping me lift

dad off this tile, this same tile
where his catheter bag split open.

He slipped in his own strewn mess. 
We taped it—a quick fix—until it split open again.