for dad.

9/19/12

 

I feel like I’m in the clouds right now. Some mornings I wake up not knowing where I am. But I feel great. Like I could be the greatest. Like I could be you. I’ve been teeter-tottering between consciousness and sleep, feeling alive and dead, confident and terrified, sometimes over the course of only a minute, or a few seconds or a single breath.

 

And I feel like I’m in your skull, knowing now why you are the way you are, the gears always turning. The way you take a few moments’ pause before answering my questions, the way you’re so quick to answer my drunken phone calls before leaving to work in the morning, the way you squint in technical consideration before laying your cards down on the table. And even sometimes, the way you flat out leave me in the dark.

 

I get it. And I’m getting there. But I know I have a long way to go before we both see one another eye to eye. I know that in a few moments, all that I’ve been trying to tell you, all that rests behind these words as well as my reason for telling it will have drifted out the window, floated away like a feather to the wind. And I’ll return to scratching my head, wondering what I was doing and how I got here, and what my next move should be; how I’m going to lay my cards down on the table.