I only see my father in my dreams.
When I sleep, I always go back to that house. There is always the house. Always the cold pale blue of his eyes.
In both dreams and my memories of youth, I can’t speak. He has stolen my voice and it will take me a lifetime to find it again. With all of me, I hate him for making me so weak. Soon, I will come to hate myself for my weakness.
Out of spite, out of instinct, I grow. Contorted, but uncompromising. I vow to myself I will never be weak again. I lie to myself until it becomes the truth. I sell my soul for strength, for my spirit only sees salvation in the arms of vengeance and I pay the cost with my body gladly. Harsh hands have molded soft clay somehow into steel.
Years pass, I have kept my promise. In nightmares more vivid than any day I throw my father into the walls of that house until they both break. Too blinded by the redness of righteous rage to see; now I am him, and he is me. I am an acolyte, building a temple brick by brick with every vengeful dream to worship the very heat of hate I’d come to love. I will be a man before I tear it all down, going gray as I kill the god I’d learn to pray to.
I still see my father only in dreams. Now, he is mute. The ice in his cold eyes melt into a wrinkled face whose age makes me curse how much time we wasted. I ask him questions, so many questions that have broken my back through the years to carry alone; that even with my newfound strength I still buckle under the weight of them. I implore my father, help me lift this burden. I am begging him and he still will not answer me. He has already given me everything he has, and there is nothing left.
In my heart, I buried my father long ago. Whoever now wears his face, I do not know him. All that is known is: it never had to be like this–but it will always be like this. That lesson has been lashed across my back a thousand times over, and a thousand and one times I forgave the lion tamer that held the whip. The one who had the power to make me forget I am a king of beasts. But father, look, I have found my claws and remembered my teeth. Aren’t you proud of me? Let God never say I did not honor you for never taking the same arm raised against me. You may have stolen my pride, and in your eyes you were always in the right–but tell me now, who is left? Who mourns the man you were with me?
Within the cemetery in my chest I lay my wreath of grief at a grave that bears my surname. It blossoms with petals of pity, and, in spite of my greatest efforts, an undying note of longing in a song I’ll never stop singing. My heart was not meant to compose only laments. It never needed to be like this, but you will always be like this. Though my love could not change you, that is no fault of my love. I leave you where you always wanted to be left, alone.
The dreams sometimes still visit me, drifting in on quiet nights when my heart has no vacancy. There is always the house. Always the cold pale blue of my father’s eyes.
Most nights I just fight the sleep.
ian gallows ©