Work Text:
Breath shallow, limbs turned every which way. This is how I lay. How, on the eve of a birthday I vouched to acknowledge, I will eventually find sleep. I have no need to find a routine that takes the night into account. This holds true for appetite, or even healthcare. Not that finances are a source of stress at all. There are so many null factors that it can weigh even heavier than the lives lived by fickle mortals. Yet, I will retire. I will greet the morning as anyone decent would.
Dirk has been dead for an entire year, and that span has shown to fall out of my grasp. His funeral was quaint, maybe even moving. He has slept for one year out of an eternity. His ghost has a temperature and a smell. His possessions have been liquefied to those who dared to take from him even further, and Dave has not spoken a word of him still. I could have been him, surely, and such a truth has made me become decent.
I lay here, late friends not withstanding, and wonder if I will see midnight out. The alarm is set. An itinerary of celebration has been long since in motion. Selfishly, I wish to harness Time as I turn to a position facing the window. A single moment without rest forever repeated. It is a minute or two until the thirteenth, and I wonder if Dirk is replaying the same second in his slumber. As if any Strider could rest in peace.
Hand laid against the sheets, curling at the fingers, I begin to ponder the ghosts that stand at the foot of me. One stands out in the periphery of where I glanced, donned in hat and trousers creased with care. I could almost laugh if tears did not choke me. How you would have adored celebrating at my side. But, I barely offer you consideration. You flank me as I go forward, even following, but I do not turn. Shall I greet you now? Do I offer to lead this dance that has been left teetering between to-be-or-not-to-be ever since I did not bid you farewell? It is humorous to assume I even could have. Between you turning cold and a friend who spoke the words of a higher power, I could never have grown up under you.
I talk to you now about events you already know. Do not humor me, father. I know you are not truly present, but instead are with oblivion. Shall I ground my wandering dissatisfaction, or even regrets? I suppose I must simply Act. So, I speak.
My childhood was remarkably confectionery. My preteen years so delicately frosted. Marzipan pieces pinched between fingers shaking with anticipation, awaiting their respective placement amongst the sucrose. I had devoured so much of your cake growing up that it has become a food group within my memory. Vegetables and grains , that which would nourish me, did not act as a priority. What could not smear my lips, stain my polo, or churn in my gut did not hold importance to you. So, you baked.
You baked with so much enthusiasm. Your office empty, your hobbies discarded. I had hardly ever known where you worked, or for what industry. Did you sit at a cubicle? Were the digital numerals reading the time on your interface often considered? Did you plead with them to allow you to depart? I often wonder if you had any companions whether tangible or at a distance. You were a man of the kitchen. You made yourself stranger to all else.
You smelt of tobacco, and my nose often wedged within your breastbone when I was too young to know myself as your son. Knees bruised from tumbling off playground equipment, or even frustration at my own failing vision. Glasses were a tool, but they led to no solution. I was still a small thing who cried often. Whose skin was wet with teardrops and a runny nose. Little fists pulling at your tie, I was a boy who needed his daddy. You cooed enough in my direction, and even held the right words of praise in your grasp. Yet, did you ever look exactly to me as every piece of me screamed for you? With your slender hands in my hair, did you ever look down from the bountiful blue sky?
You first used the word "man" at seven. I was already late to sleep on my lonesome at such an age, and no grandmother nor co parent could offer criticisms. Only a guidebook you read at late hours, trembling in the fingers and knees from evening caffeine, pushed you to insist I have a room of my own. I had sobbed once more. It could have been the unknown that danced in the midnight shadows, or simply a wish to not be without the warmth of your reassuring frame. I cannot remember anymore, dad. Godhood has made the edges of recollection faded and sun bleached. Regardless, I resisted the decision indicative of aging.
A plush animal under my arm, the glasses that allowed me sight slipping from my nose, I had refused your embrace. It was anger, spite. I had hated you then, and that may have been the first of many instances. Your words had changed. Less of assuring safety, and instead introducing a concept completely new. I was taking the first step of becoming a man, you said, and that such things were to be taken tightlipped and without complaint. I slept that night with a clock that ticked mockingly, but there were no tears left to be shed.
I know now you were raising no little girl. Not even a boy, nor a man. You were raising an Heir. A fully realized god. That really must have terrified you. I would think you even felt crippling guilt at times. I wonder if you prayed to those who never came to be. If you repented for being a father in name alone. I cannot revoke credit from you. You were a desperate man who held enough compassion. Although, it may still hold true that you were pampering me to rise. To solidify. To have a consistency that is pleasing enough to the teeth that tear me. After everything, you loved to bake.
Midnight has come, and the satellite breaching the sky is now stationary in rest. Halfway through its journey, it still stands tall leagues ahead of me. Although, as sleep tugs at my depleting consciousness, there is satisfaction. Satisfaction that you are gone, and dissipated all at once. Today is my twenty-third birthday, and as I fall into slumber, I heal from the wounds of a father who loved his little boy. However, unlike me, John shall never be proper enough to see the sunrise.
Goodnight, dad.