Eloquence

Today my eldest son visited me after long months of absence, and we took a drive, talking candidly about the spectrum of kinship and events, identity and illusion. He confessed to me that once I had sent him a batch of poems, which had actually moved him. Reading them on the toilet, carefully poised and concentrated as a sensitive sufferer of hemorrhoids, he suddenly had an epiphany, and, as he told me then, discovered for the first time in his life, real tears pooling in his eyes, something precious about his scribbling father. All his life rose before him: adolescence, anger, confusion, truth, and all the circumstances that lead us to the solitude we must endure for the duration; felt most keenly in the privacy of our common, often unpleasant biological functions . . . Noticing the roll was empty, and without hesitation, a decision was made: ass-cutting eloquence, the stench of life and swirling love.