They’re ashen, downcast – the gray of eyes, the tears of clouds, mix together to paint a pretty picture and twist my gaze into an unwanted inheritance. His eyebrows crease, etching in worry – a dampening wraith on an already dark mood. Plain as day, a shadow on the blemished canvas of two would-be perfect lives; two would-be perfect lies polished and airbrushed into a masterpiece.
We don’t speak a word. Silence can erase anything, if held just long enough. Or so my father seems to think. We don’t speak of my bedroom walls, easily transformed into a diary with the aid of a Sharpie. Permanent for an instant, erased the next. Mom’s locket, hidden under my auburn curls, goes unmentioned. So does what I did three days past. With autumn, change is coming. In his head, gears – rusted from lack of use – are turning. Still, not a word passes between us; his fingers twitch, yearning for the embrace and toxic kisses of his cigarette. Gears grate against each other, groaning the ache of lovers out of sync.
Why can’t I be the daughter he’d never had? Why? There’s no real answer, besides that role doesn’t suit me; because a marionette’s swift motions slow when mishandled by the clumsy hands of an amateur puppeteer. Finally, mercifully, the gears click into place. The problem is found, a solution sought out. It’s me. It’s because of Meghan. Inside are fifty shades of gray, a washed-out part played too many times to count. But the tinkling of our neighbor’s bicycle bells, glinting with the light off its red handlebars, transports me back to three-times yesterday.
Sweet, refreshing, out of season – the tang of lime explodes into being; each circle twirled a contradiction between head and heart, a plea for one second more. Light-headed from laughter, sharp-minded and aware of the clunk of a fallen something in the near distance; an oak’s barren canopy waving frantically to a sky of endless blue, fleeing from a hound’s rough woof and a boy’s shout biding her return.
A grass of the most impossibly green caressed the skin of my back beneath its denim and tee, nature’s hand-made baby blanket. One embroidered with flowers, plucked of a single button – its purple head swapping hands, to be cradled against the cream of my palm. The droning of late bees is replaced by the monotone of my dad’s voice, my daisy wilting to meet the black and white tile of our mutual –disheveled – eating table.
Her last petal will soon fall, ending the jibe of to be or not to be but gifting me with the beginning of a wish. If my father could wish on a shooting star, he’d wish me into perfection. If I could do so, Sunday would be the chorus of again and again. There’s tomorrow and its once upon a time. Because that’s how all those stories start, right? Only later do the velvet curtains draw to a close with applause and a happily ever after.