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When he was young. I thought he was old. It never occurred to me that I might be wrong. That old wouldn’t show up for years and years, decades even. He wasn’t tall like my grandfather. But he wasn’t short either. He had a habit of biting his cuticles that I inherited and would be reluctant to give up until I found myself with dentures and the inability to truly bite through the meat of the cuticle. I don’t know if he discovered the same inconvenience when he started wearing dentures but feel like he must have. When he left my mother, back in 1977, I wasn’t devastated the way some children might have been. The devastation came when I found out that his leaving didn’t leave me with much of an option. I had to grow up and discover for myself – this world where I’d been a child, an only child at that. It wouldn’t take me long to realize that, without him at home, I had more liberty. I could ask for things and they would be given. I could stay overnight with friends without being hassled. I could do those things that he wouldn’t have allowed because he was more controlling than my mom. It was only when I got older, much older, that I would remember the days before he left without thinking to myself, I must have got that from him. The angry words, spoken before thinking. The jealousy that came in spurts. The dark side of myself. The side that was so unlike my mom, who was a reflection of grace itself. It would take me many years to whack away at those character traits that made me realize I was, like him, the “bad guy”. It would take me years, and he became old as I lived. In his old age, I could see that he wasn’t as big as I remembered him to be. He wasn’t as bad as I’d thought he was. I realized that he was just a child himself. A child, when I’d thought he was old. But when old finally showed itself, it came with such defeat that I knew he wasn’t as strong as I’d thought him to be, either. In fact, I could see he was quite weak. So weak. He’d put on that strength like a coat, just a coat to help him survive the storms. While inside, he’d felt feeble all along. Just like me.

tears never melted
the silence between our hearts
though years misjudged us
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