—ALL THE DARK AND ALL THE LIES, WERE ALL THE EMPTY THINGS DISGUISED AS ME, STRANGER THAN YOUR SYMPATHY

 

 

 

Tethered to Nothing

 

I am three funeral days beyond forgiveness. 

On the walk home, crows follow overhead, cawing harshly, their plumage motor oil-black, wise birds who are known to mourn their dead brethren. 

It’s a mile and a half from school, then a bend under Dad’s barbwire fence to our trailer plopped down like a puce-colored stone on a craggy hill.

I skip the house, open the barn door instead, spy the rafters. Both the ladder and makeshift noose are gone, same as Dad. Gnats swirl in a cone of sunlight while the air smells like chaff and regret.

Irene, our milk cow, bellows as if in heat or ready to deliver a calf. Her tail swishes horseflies, her jaws working sideways on some sprigs of hay. She’ll need milking soon enough.

I’ll be ten in two days, but I’m not sure if I want to be inching that close to becoming a man. I read poetry, wear my feathered hair long, so I get called both Faggot and Hick. More than one kid has told me Dad hung himself because he couldn’t stand the sight of me anymore.

Who’s to know what’s true? He was a complex man, somber and silent, like a stack of rusted beer cans with too many secrets. If he ever said he loved me, I don’t recall it, though Mother swears he did more than once. Again, the truth is a slippery bar of soap.

Tonight, some men are supposed to bounce around on the moon. If I make it till then, I aim to climb a tree and watch, imagining myself out there with them, floating in space, tethered to nothing.