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You can't remember the last time you smiled without crying.
Not the fake, sleazy grins that are stapled on your face. The unconscious ones, the ones that stretch your cheeks till the skin creaks, the ones that make your heart gurgle with feverish feelings, the ones that always end up tasting like ash and salty tears and sickly warmth.
Smiles are a biological human factor, and you are a failed bioweapon one chemical away from incinerating away your remaining flesh and heart.
It's embarrassing. That's why you grasped the last scraps of muscle from your chest and squished them as hard as you could while your fingers shivered, not trembled or shook, because that would mean a lack of security and you are strong not weak.
You shiver because you are cold, cold from the tips of your veins to your pores and never hot enough, not for him, never for him. You are cold and strong and shivering and that is why you cauterized your brain to convince yourself you are not trembling.
It's shameful. If toxic masculinity has taught you anything, it's that crying is a mortal sin. Heroes don't cry, is what a Monster told you once, men don't cry, and you uttered that over and over again as if it mattered to your rebellious tear ducts.
Don't be weak don't be a failure you are destined for greatness. Heroes don't cry, but you're the farthest thing from a Hero, and men don't cry, but you're barely a man nowadays, a sad excuse of a human, stalking alleyways like a vengeful spirit, an agglomeration of burnt flesh, unprofessional medical procedures and crappy eyeliner.
You refuse to be weak and you refuse to be a failure because you will prove him wrong. Or prove him right, rub it in his face that he brought a monster into the world, spoonfed it venom and added damage to its already sick head.
Prove him right, wrong, it doesn't matter as long as he rots in the same hell you breathe into every day, as long as you laugh, cry, dance, choke on blood as the fire leaves his eyes, the cold leaves his eyes, your filthy existence finally tainting more than the souls of his boots. As long as you get to burn him until his ashes become one with the air. You were destined for greatness, even if it was robbed from you. You'll be great. You'll be great.
Revenge is empty, is what people say, but you don't care because you're already empty, what is there to lose? Without revenge you are nothing and you cannot be nothing. You will be noticed. You will be acknowledged. You will succeed. You will make him regret. You will be more than a tragedy, the dead son that hangs off his father's coat tails. You will take that image and shatter it under your boots. You are everything but weak and pathetic.
The roar of the fire has always called out to you, a kid looking up at his father, strong and intense and blazing and thinking yes. Yes. This is who I want to be. This is who I will be like and it didn't even matter that your body always hurt, and that you're cold, not hot, and ice always always always always melts beneath the roar of an inferno, or that mom always flinched when she looked at you or that you had more burns and bruises than skin, you needed to be like him. Strong. Hot, smoldering and forceful. The Best. The greatest.
You were destined for greatness, except your cells started to rot under the heat, except the burns became too obvious, too incriminating, except you became weak. If he hadn't ruined your life first, you'd say that your body is your worst enemy. Never complying, always creaking and shattering and shivering.
You swear you were destined for greatness, but things never seem to go your way, and control of yourself always slips out of your shivering fingers and you become nothing to everyone. Nothing but an empty grave. A cautionary tale. A failure. A name on a death certificate.
You're self aware enough to know you're a bad person, an asshole, a bad influence, even. You're self aware enough you don't deserve pity or sympathy, that when you finally kill him, when you finally get some peace of mind and fall apart next to ashes and bones, people will say good riddance. You won't be seen as a Hero, but you never really had a chance to be one, either way. At least you'll get to ruin his reputation, shatter his weak ego, and that's all that matters to you in the end.
It's funny, how your entire life has revolved around him. Funny, how a desperate kid can turn into a sociopath all because of one flaming piece of shit. Funny, how every single thing you do, every pump of lighter fluid that scurries through your rubbery veins, every clack of your bones, every twitch of a finger, is going towards something for him. Either it be the once obsessive adoration you had to the loathing, repulsive and sickly urge to fucking end him. Your entire life is dedicated to your father. All your tears have been for him.
All of your tears were for him. He didn't want them. He didn't want you.
The roar of the fire has not always called out to you. It was him that you seeked and it wasn't I want to be like you it was I love you endlessly please love me too, his screams and his light and danger and poison were all you wanted, because you were young and didn't know any better, mistaking abuse as love, and you felt a sick, stifling warmth spider it's way into your lungs as bruises bled through your fragile, cold skin.
Sickness lingers within you, sickness lives within you. You still have one of your brother's baseball caps. You have your sister's birthday circled on the calendar. You think about your mother and fester. You think about the little prodigy and burn. You think about him and set the entire vicinity aflame, and watch as your skin melts off your bones, like he did so many times.
It's a good thing tears evaporate. It's just unfortunate for you that your tearducts only leak blood now, that stick to your skin and leave evidence to your shame.
It just means all your tears come directly from your heart. There's probably something poetic about it, that some apathetic monster's tears are from the heart. Nobody will get to think about that, though. There was only one person those tears were for, and he didn't want them.
He didn't want them.