My father does not believe in God or therapists—instead, he pedals his bike past Brighton Beachto the Coney Island Y to swim his fifty laps.Once, I went with him and watched as he emergedfrom the locker room in faded swim trunksmoving slowly to the edge of the pool. He paused,lifting his hands over the gray halo on his chest,pressing his palms together in a gestureI know he learned as a boy.My father’s eyes: devout with a darknesshe keeps buried deep insidewhere it glows hell-hot as the emberfrom the cigarillo his father—a womanizer,drunk, half-asleep—dropped on the sheetssetting the bed ablaze, and even though extinguishedkept smoldering invisibly inside the mattress springs,reigniting, sending the house up in smoke a second time.So my father’s anger burns, a blood-wicked flamescorching through the softest parts of his interioruntil it rages through the house,blackening the rooms again.Even in the absence of ideologyI am trying to learn forgiveness—I watched my father’s body breach the air for just a momentbefore he dove, disappearing beneath the surface.Steam coiling through the chlorinated room,the ripples his body made still reached me on the other side.