ever lancaster, district eight | finished

My father taught me how to live.

I was such a devil of a boy. Sticky fingers and a crooked grin — candies in the palm of my hand and flecks of earth in the dark curls of my hair. My childhood was a sweet existence. Just a kid who had everything, who wanted everything, so spoiled and terribly brilliant.

Like the sun rising over a garden long abandoned.

And even when the fruits began to sour, and the flowers started to wilt, I was still able to hold out my arms to the light. To go on adventures in the woods circling the estate, to kiss the cheeks of girls whose names I never cared to learn, to gorge myself on all the splendors of the world.

There was not much to know about me until my father taught me how to die. Until I realized he was a drunk, and an addict; a man who swallowed all the wonders around him until he could only choke on them. And I found his body on the kitchen floor, lying in a spill of vodka. Staring up at the ceiling.

At the stars just beyond it.

I did not help dig his grave. I did not pick the tree he was laid beside. I did not choose his suit, or fix his hair, or take one last look at him before the casket closed. I remembered a man who told his son to love everything, to take everything, to look into a mirror until everything else faded away. Until it was only you, and the cold.

To be content with the loneliness.

To have the world and not even see it.

And I remember still being a boy, and opening the cupboard doors. I remember my first glass of liquor, and the burning in my chest, and the six glasses that followed. Until I was crying, or remembering that I had cried, and my cheeks were dry and I was staring up at the ceiling, too.

I didn't see anything. I didn't feel anything.

I smiled when there was nothing left to want.

☀

That much of my youth, I try to ignore. Even when I'm still only a teenager, and my fingers are wrapped tightly around a shot glass of whiskey, and my grandfather who took me in says that one day I'll be an exceptional man. The sunlight still catches my jaw, I still laugh and my breath still smells like mint.

I am hungry as ever, but somber now. Like a great serpent who has fasted for months, wrapping itself around a pale deer and begging it to stay still. I am sad, and I am bright, and I do not need to tell you a metaphor about how all the stars are dying just for us to see.

I don't need to tell you that I'm haunted, that I enjoy feeling numb, that I am prideful and haughty and so reckless. But I can tell you about a girl I saw just outside my window, who marched through the winter snow and set a fire with just her eyes. I remember catching her gaze through the glass. I remember the way she squinted at me, like I was a thing that needed to be studied.

Like I was worth knowing.

And it took my breath away, and I smiled.