awaits me on my doorstep.

The deer, antlered in his prime, is etched

into my father’s wallet, packaged carelessly

and sent to me twenty years after his death.

ID cards and scraps of paper hold evidence

of the years my father crammed into his short life.

“There it is,” my husband says, “Your downfall by one degree.”

And I see what I have missed—my father’s tribal membership card

blood quantum: seven sixteenths—

half Indian—less one degree—and me

halved again beyond distinction, beyond petition.

I close the wallet and study the deer—etched under trees,

not pine, rigid, native, resolute through the coldest of winters,

but elm—transplanted, cultivated, vulnerable

like blood lines— diminishing—by degrees.