Stonecrop Magazine

You wrap my feet in colored blankets, you run your fingers through my hair. You sing the songs you used to sing to me before bed until I got mad at you and told you to stop. “I’m too old, mama. Those are baby songs.”  

Uncle David sits behind you on my bed, smoking a cigarette. He looks as though he hasn’t eaten in days. He goes to put a hand on your shoulder, stops, and walks across the room instead, to the window overlooking the beach. The water looks nearly black at this time of year, a second night sky below us.  

My father is in Illinois. I haven’t seen him since I was three but I know this, as sure as I’ve ever known anything. He is half naked, drinking a warm beer on his porch and watching the snow fall. Inside, a stereo blares his favorite song, the one with the lyrics that make his regrets feel like something noble he can wear. You do not have his number now, have no way to tell him what happened, but I still think he knows, just like I know that the girl he’s been seeing at the bar is pregnant, that the payment on his truck is overdue. That he’s been thinking about you lately, of calling to apologize for how it all went down, but each time he goes to dial our old number he opens another beer and starts the song over instead.  

How badly did I want to be him, this ruined man I only ever knew from the Polaroids you hid underneath your bed? You lift my hand to your breast and it is tattooed like his, a sailor girl straddling a bottle of rum. You hold it tight, trying to will the warmth back into it. You lower your face to my chest and your tears stain a flannel shirt that could have just as easily come from his closet as mine.  

The room–or my understanding of it–starts to dim. Uncle David says something as he walks back to your side, but it comes out wrong, like a cassette unspooling. You shake your head and touch my hair again, careful not to let your fingers go where it is still matted and wet. I want to hold you, to lie and tell you everything will be okay, but my voice is locked behind the bluish lips you can no longer bear to look at. We’re past that now.  

The lights flicker above us and I know it isn’t me–that bulb was already starting to go out a week ago–but you look up at it with a reverence that quiets my fear and when you start to sing again I know that I am finally free to go on to whatever it is that comes next.