I’m Writing A Book

VOL. 1

3/8/24 8:29pm

I am writing with my father on my shoulder but his words do not sound like the snap of a Nikon like they once did (it is strange the way our voices lose their heft once we decide a palm provides more closure). His words used to have the grip of a safety strap, giving me the assurance to buy myself a cellophane-coated death without twitching, or tie my shoes the right way and not feel too useless about it. Now they sound like refrigerators in a grocery store, blaring in silence, a woman’s hush, soft embraces from– This is stupid.

His interruptions come like a voice in my head, though I know his body is just as fragile as mine. I could lift him with a clothespin, yet the weight I bear each day is enough to dry-swallow half a hydrocodone I found loose in the cabinet this morning.

Would you like to shove this sweat inside your skin and watch it form mountains, blood within valleys, a figure in the center shaped like an infection? Do what you please.

My father perches, watching silhouettes of angry women pass us. They are angry because today is International Women’s Day, and we should like to throw a soirée, gowns and gems, missing teeth, a bit of spit on the back of our heels. Instead we are stuck in the aisles, forced to eye the millions of types of carrots, and I don’t want carrots, tonight or ever again.

I have never felt human while carrying a bright red basket, filling it with cans dated years from now, lights above me mocking the universal shade of teeth– it has always been the greatest ordeal– and I am sure you lot know what has gathered between now and ten years ago. Nonetheless, and with great disdain, we learn to feast on the things we despise.

A woman wears a long blue coat in front of me, brown shoes, a bag to match. I’ve seen her dozens of times, memorized every costume, which scarf she favorites, which cranberry juice she gets when she’s happy, and which one she gets when she’s whatever the opposite of happy is. Her bright metal hair remains stagnant no matter the wind, and I always wonder if she is hiding something underneath all that despondency. My father comments on her languor, that one subtle limp, and the thread that drags next to her lentil-colored shoes, and I cannot help to think he has grown heavier today.

I tried once. To tell him that he does not need to sit next to my ear for me to listen. He gave a bizarre look and decided to move his belongings into my collarbone that evening. And suppose the preservatives in our eyes don't burn tonight— it will still live behind the lids, taking every chance it gets to throw a one-sided argument into the stew and grow faith as anger rises with it. The furniture lodged in my ribs provides comfort as I realize my father shall always be with me from here. Each CD and pair of vintage sneakers has succumbed to the natural process of phagocytosis, and he doesn’t seem to miss them until I bring it up at least once a day, usually following something along the lines of

You ladies put on your eyelashes and expect the world to be placed at your feet. What you need is a good fucking–

The windows in my car are tinted. Not because I want them to be, but because my father once told me that every man wants to either kill me or fuck me, and I’d rather boil my carrots in a large pot and let the steam go straight to the back of my eyes. But there is some part of me, a damsel grown from soil, that adores this man who was once her father. He had given me my first stem (and my first pruner). It is in moments like these where I ponder the pages upon pages of recipes that have been seethed into my lips, something from my mother I like to tell myself, and grieve the lost copies as they once were.

My father tells me how to prepare the vegetables, something soft and orange, an insect inside my brain, kicking his heels against my neck (in some sort of effort to reenact the trojan war, and is it not fitting that the Hero of Grief is sat directly in place of whom I grieve?) and reminiscing on the days when his body wasn’t quite as fruitless as the tree he convinced me to plant, which he was positive would grow– Now take the spoon and stir it until I tell you to stop– Muskmelon.

We eat in silence and what I want to say is How dare you? Why would you sacrifice both of us just for a front row seat to Hamlet’s Act IV? To eye her body one last time? She can’t deny you now. Some part of you must know how truly abhorrent your actions are. But I don’t. It won’t solve anything. It never has.

I can smell the mold above my fridge and all I’ve ever wanted is a father who knows how to repair things. The trees outside my window look like a mistake I should’ve made months ago, and I know the man on my shoulder is getting tired, so I take us to bed for the night.

*****

— ODH

(approximately 10% of the total work)