When I was old enough to find it on Google Maps, I called it “the shack.” Baseboards hanging on within an inch of life, decaying wood painted over with yellowing white. Locked in that musty rot, the Murphy bed hanging out of the wall like a flaccid threat. I don’t think he ever once yelled at me. He washed my stuffed animal in a shiny tin bowl, his tattered blue t-shirt reflecting off the side, warped like a house of broken mirrors, making his stomach look pudgier than it really was.
I was too young to try to be a good daughter. He was too young to try to be a good father.
Lost in a cyclone of prescription pills and bud, he became something I see in my own eyes. Forgotten by the world, a lock-box of broken promises, dusty shelves and wasted potential. But he made me macaroni and cheese on Sundays, the neon powder clumped together just the way I liked. Then he lost his mind, and, five years later, I lost mine, too.
The story never really had an ending; there was no period at the end of the sentence wrapped in coroner’s makeup and plastic florals. He still lives on the other side of town, in a nicer house now, with a new wife and child. He still lives in the prints my working hands leave behind.
*I wrote this in April of 2025 and just now found it. I never posted it anywhere, so I thought I would post it here to get my writing tag started. It's definitely a bit melodramatic but melodrama is kind of laced into everything I do. In a way, this little piece acts as a reminder of how far I've come and how far I still have to go.
