our father
Sauce is simmering on the stove. She follows a recipe from the Italian woman who does her waxing. She’s added too much garlic, but even if he notices - he’ll pretend it’s good. Tomato paste is the woman’s secret ingredient.
She wears a grey zip up and matching sweatpants. They’re covered in tiny black stars.
After dinner (she was right - he pretended not to notice the garlic), she curls up on his lap. They each hold their respective glasses of red, and he tells her it’s been a while since he felt like this.
She doesn’t know how to react. Things at home are overwhelming. She’s not sure about her career path. She’s out of a 6 year relationship. It hasn’t even been a year of not spending every evening at the hospital. This is her new life. Her new normal.
He feels perfect. Too good to be true. She fits so easily into his arms. Their dates never seem to last long enough. They never run out of things to say. Same sense of humour. Same banter. His friends tease him. Her friends tease her. Everyone thinks they’re going to get married.
There’s reason, now. There’s meaning, now.
There’s a lifeline.
-
“I didn’t speak to my father for a good six years. And I was a menace meeting my mom’s first few boyfriends.”
It might be a heavy first date conversation for some, but for her - she welcomes it. He understands how it feels to float. To feel kicked off the ship. To look behind you, and to see everything that promised to hold you becomes smaller and smaller. The waves underneath your raft become your new home. And when the currents come, you learn to feel grateful. You find solace in the unknown, and comfort in the darkness of the sea.
She lets herself open to him.
I think you are safe now, she tells herself.
And when it’s time, she will welcome the current when it comes to pull her under.
-
“I told the nurse I worry about you.”
She is sitting next to her mother on the couch. Her mother places the white and beige blanket over the top of them.
She scoots closer and rests her head on her shoulder.
“How come?”
“You’re not angry about me dying. I just want you to feel like...you know…you can express yourself more.”
-
She loses track of the men, if she’s being honest. She counts each one before bed at night, but then realizes she’s missed one and has to start all over again.
They are just numbers. And what she fears of becoming the most, is starring right back at her.
-
“It’s all a pattern - the human experience. Everything that has been told to us, everything then becomes conditioned within us. And the patterns will repeat, repeat, and repeat themselves. Until the universe starts to scream at us, right in our face.”
Her spiritual healer always knows when something is wrong.
“Walk through the fire, Emily. Let yourself burn.”