I think it must've been for some kind of special event or something. He was back at my house, asleep in his spot on my mom's bed. I walked into her room to find her, but he was asleep in his jeans and tshirt, just like I always remembered him. And he looked up at me and I could see the pain in his eyes.

I couldn’t believe it.
I hadn't thought of him in months.
I was completely in denial for a single moment.
And then.

Something snapped, out of my control.I raged and my mom came running. I slammed the door in her face. Screaming. Addict, broken promises and you’ll never change and how could you DARE to come back here. He gives me a huge box and makes me open it.

Inside of this box were the things that haunt me still about being his. I dug through it, one thing after another, pulling out all the things I love that came from my father. A receipt of albums he bought for me, starting with Sinatra and ending with the Beatles. A picture of our red convertible. The newspaper from the day our baseball team got into the World Series. A package of fresh tortillas. Two dozen blood red roses. The last thing I can remember pulling out of the box was an old tshirt that I used to have : "Brunette, Mexican, and product of a civil Divorce." But instead of being just the way it was, wrinkled and worn, the word civil was crossed out and replaced with horrible. Other words were written all over the shirt. Words like doubt, bad father, fear, abandonment, fault.

I can feel myself buckling. I'm angry at first and slowly I begin to break, and silently I start to cry, and I get up and yell at him. I tell him he's pathetic, that I need more than what he's ever given me, that I need him to be a man and apologize. And he looks down at me, dark and firey, and says, you're so like me. You always were. Look at you. No fear. You're strong.

And he doesn't say, but I know he misses me.

I stalk away to finish opening the box, knowing my eyes are red and heavy with tears. Crying still. He sits back down on the bed and once I come upon the shirt. I climb up to sit next to him and he tells me he can't leave Katrina, he can't break her heart. And I tell him I don't expect him to, because my mother is better without him. And we sit. And I'm thinking that he ran away, and my heart hurts. Craving. Love.

And I wake up with a sense of missing something.

Today I’ve returned to square one. I have to start forgetting again.

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