For a few weeks after my mother left, my dad and I lived together alone. Snow was falling outside, there were signs of the end of the world, white flakes disappearing on contact like a forgotten alphabet. But we didn’t notice that. He made me plain eggs when I woke up as if I were still a child. Then he sat in the rocking chair with his eyes closed and asked me to read to him from my books.

So, I read them. One after the other, end to end. I liked to feel useful. He thought he understood all of my books, he thought they must be about him, so they made him cry. He asked for my forgiveness. His eyes and facial muscles went blank, erasing memory. In turn, positioned within my own blank, and following verses with my fingertip, I accepted all of his apologies. It was a painless exchange like a loose handshake or a lever.

But we sat together and I read. For a few days, I could sit next to him, steadily diminishing like a candle, a field of white in his hair. Reliably, the days disintegrate. We can sit together in a silence where our childhood hardly exists.