“i always knew there was something about you— not this, not exactly, but something”
it is two thousand or so, anno domini we have finished dinner and put the plates in the sink dad does the washing up you sit on the couch and pat the space next to you i have homework, or a video game or three way call gossiping to do but you insist
i am growthspurt teenage gangly and unstylish i am not the child you wanted will and grace perform their antics for a live studio audience as you ask me, why do you dress like that? we can afford better i do not know how to explain to you that it is like dressing a vampire in the mirror
you are a mercurial hazard i can tell your fordescort firestones in the alley from anywhere in the house i know to be quiet as you drink this morning's coffee with last night's brandy and this evening's first cigarette your after work lilac tree reverie sacrosanct i miss field trips for want of permission slips and hide report cards, newsletters, any evidence of my decades-long intrusion on your life
i am in high school and all my friends live way across town where by six pm you are too drunk to drive me the queer eye men prance and cape for the camera and as they interior-decorate for lonely dads you ask me why i never go anywhere don't i have a girlfriend, or a boyfriend perhaps? you are pleased with yourself for asking this
only tv time is safe but it is full of snake pits
it is two thousand twenty or so dad is no longer washing up you sit alone under the lilac, bereft and furious you do not wash up
there is a noise before you, a buzzing someone is telling you to get out of your lawn chair the one your husband brought home from ernst hardware, or pay n pak, or chubby and tubby, the straps have conformed to you over twenty years a perfect sling
the buzzing is getting louder the buzzing says you have to eat bathe sleep and take your meds the buzzing is your son, but she is the wrong kind of faggot
when i told you over the phone before i came home you said that was just fine you loved me regardless
but now to you i am he when you are angry and she only in front of others at the drive-in in north bend where the clerk coos and says “i have a daughter who lives in san francisco” you smile, and say this is my daughter patricia in the car you call me a cunt
you wondered why i didn't think to tell you sooner you always knew
then why was i so fucking alone