A TABLE
I moved back to my parent’s house, the place where I lived
only a year – I can’t yet dare to call it home even if the rub that family rubs
sticks – and for the past 17 years have only seen in the wintry, sparkling,
times, after getting sick and losing my job. I now sit at the family table,
writing this, while watching TV and drinking a beer. “European beer is stronger
than American beer,” my father says to me and I say no, that’s not necessarily
true. He says I’m being contrarian, which I’m not being, just truthful. But he
lets me drink his beer anyway.
There are always more beers. There are no other father.
I write this after being off anti-depressants and feel
something akin to something again. And can get a boner.
I don’t do anything with the boner, but I’m glad I have it.
I sit at this table now, writing these words, among the
others that have sat at this table before, in the same way I would eat my own
meals, alone, in the city, and still watching the same thing at the same time I
would have I never had left. I sit at this table now and, while alone, do not
feel alone. I sit at this table now and think about high school, about Spam,
about the puddle of wine on the carpet when I had a party while my parents were
away that never sunk in deep enough to debunk my image as a good son. Some
things last a long time.
I sit at this table now, writing these words, and stare out
the window and stare. They call me, the little bird houses on the edge of the
window, no birds inside.
The same cracks in the family plaster still haunt, only
closer now still.
I’m not used to turning on and off lights, as I enter and
leave each room; having rooms (as in plural) to begin with. The dark places
aren’t scary; they’re exciting. I turn on the light and there’s just the room
in front of me. A room somewhat familiar, yet distant, like an ocean you’ve
seen before but the waves look different because waves are like snowflakes and
other drops of water, waiting, crashing down when you least expect it. I try to
talk myself out of taking a pill tonight and almost succeed. I almost succeed
at everything I do.
And I do.