100- Da
I left the kitchen since he didn’t know who I was. The tears were coming and they would just confuse him, so I ducked into the next room. There, I began to openly cry because being forgotten by your Dad is too much to bear, even as an adult.
I was startled when he entered the room. I looked up as I tried to dry my face and adjust my expression. It was then that something passed through his eyes. Some recognition of who I was to him.
“I helped you,” he said.
“I helped you when you would cry”.
100- Bird
I drove one very cold night to get my son from work. The late day melancholy set in with a song and dark road. I rose from my thoughts by the sight of a bird heading for my windshield, her breast lit up by my car’s headlights. She veered and I could hear talons scrape my roof.
“Little bird, what’re you doing?” I asked, surprising myself with my voice, wondering if her feet were grappling to escape or hold on to my car. Probably, it was both, right? We want to hold on and be free at the same time.
100- Owen
There was a small hall that separated our rooms
and 13 months that separated our births.
We always shared a small window of space.
We fought, we laughed, we defended, we shared.
And then one day he took the big, pink clock-on-a-rope
from my shower and became
Flavor Flave,
every night,
at my bedtime.
And the only way to get him to leave was to say
“Good night, Owen”.
Not “Good night”,
not “Get out”,
not anything else but
“Good night, Owen”.
I had to say his name.
I never understood why
and I have never asked.
100- Defining Love
When you tell me you love me,
I oscillate between
believing it
because it’s what you think love is,
and not believing it
because it’s not what love is.
Can it be love if it’s not what we want,
and is it love because it’s declared to be?
That’s my mind’s work
while my heart tries to read the truth
from your mouth and your eyes.
And isn’t it all forgiven in the end, anyway?
Since that’s just what I do?
Always the fool
trying to demonstrate love
to someone else who knows
how to make it serve only them.
100- Waiting
When I went back into the hospital to see him, I had the dreaded wait for the double doors to open after announcing myself. I always felt the most anxious to be with him when I was in the building, and that was when someone else controlled my time.
When the delay became longer than usual that day, I knew something was different, probably wrong, and the double doors just stared back at me, blankly, reminding me that I was powerless. When someone came out to tell me that he was taken away, I knew I didn’t have a say.
