DREAMS OF MY FATHER
My father is a junkie, but he is alive and well. There was a time when I wrote of him, wondering if he was safe. Was he tired? Was he fed? Was he lost in an alleyway with a strip of rubber plastered to his sweaty arm? I would have washed his feet and poured alabaster upon his head like Mary Magdalene—an atonement of sorts. At night, I would lie in bed afraid that I would never get a chance to say goodbye to him—that he would escape me in life, and too, in death. The day after my mother died, he called me from behind prison walls, his voice thick like gravy. I could not respond. He is here, she is not. It is the ultimate trick, the final cruelty, that this man with eyes caked shut, this man who cared nothing but of his sweet addiction is the only thing that I have left to claim. I brim with resentment. Barrister in training never had a chance to appeal or petition for her. Who was present to intercede? His life shatters every concept of balance. He was spared. And for that, I ache. A li...