I’d read in a book half torn to pieces about places and emotions that can only be described with polar opposites. It had been in my family’s stuffy old rectangular attic, my feet dangling down by the dust specks that drifted towards the steel ladder connecting fake wooden tile to creaky attic floorboard. It had talked about cold fires and yearning fear and childlike awe on an old crone’s face. At the time, I had scrunched up my nose, tossed the book aside, and climbed back down.
I did not understand as I hid my large form behind the smallest spruce tree in the park, icy winds drying the lone tear on my stoic face and setting my cheeks prickling ablaze. I did not understand as I watched the old man on the frozen over bench, longing for his mittened embrace yet dreading the possibility he’d see me. I did not understand as I stared into the distance, unseeing, past memories and present sorrows mixing in the gentle snowfall.
Perhaps somewhat foolishly, I had strolled into a piss colored classroom the next morning, decrying the latest chapter of a young adult novel the English teacher had promoted to get new students into reading. “But that’s not how words work,” I’d said, waving my hands around. “You can’t say Four looks ‘both very young and very old’. It doesn’t make sense.”
My teacher had propped her head up on her fist, her fake tan unable to conceal her deadpan annoyance.
“If he’s traumatized because of his dad or whatever, then he’s traumatized, and the author should just say that.”
I remembered when my grandpa had laughingly taken me on a journey across his backyard on the back of his lawn mower, and when the old man had excluded my parents from family gatherings. I remembered when my grandpa had sat and watched Pokemon with me on his big TV, and when the old man had let the rest of the family degrade my mother. I remembered sharing food with him. I remembered my father detailing stories of child neglect.
I opened my mouth to speak, but I did not know what to say, and whatever I could think to say got lodged behind the lump in my throat. I swallowed and sniffled, but he did not notice. His haggard face, lined by wrinkles and regrets, focused on something neither here nor there. I reminisced with him for a few moments. Our final moments.
Some part of me wanted to go to him, but I walked away. Some part of me wanted to reconcile the two men I knew, but I called for my brother to pick me up. Some part of me wanted to untangle the tornado of emotions in my chest, but the other part of me was content with the gaping void in my stomach.