Perhaps it is too soon to write. But with dawn already broken, bent around my shattered heart, I have nowhere else to go but inside of myself. It is my father’s time of day, before the sun, a curled up kitten mewing open the morning, our old alleyway empty of life.
The old streets here, the romantic rains, nothing can shield me or send back the one man I know I will always love.
And today, as I sit here, wanting to write, nothing beautiful comes out. The whole world seems suddenly ugly and empty.
I cannot put into words what my father has meant to me all of my life. He was the one to chase away childhood witches, who taught me how to read, to write and, more importantly, how to love. He is the one with whom I shared rainbow books of fairytales, foreign language, fat steaks, licorice and salt. He taught me to admire Spanish and lust after Central America. He taught me how to laugh—in a sense that shakes and shudders your whole self—a kind of crisp, consuming laugh only my father could entertain in me.
My father is the rarest kind. The kind who treasures his babies in snugglies, who lets his daughter curl up against him in order to get to sleep for years, who still picks you up when you are in pieces at 23 years old. Who knows how to hold you against his chest, to kiss your nose always through the tears.
I can’t say what I will miss the most. Cups of lemon tea on cold winter afternoons; photographs of dewy flowers and family fights. The sound of every day. Of the hardest, most heavenly of laughter. The echo of sizzling collar greens. Summer saunters, summer walks.
I want my father back to assure me that there will be no more volcanic eruptions, no more broken hearts.
