MY FATHER’S HOUSE
died on September 4th, 2020, at the age of twenty-three. An evic-
tion notice is a lot heavier than it looks. Seems like it’s just paper
and ink, but it’s all dead weight. Once, I carried my drunk friend up
three flights of stairs, and I was sore for five days. That was so
much easier than putting my father’s war medals into a brown box
and taping it closed. I treated my teenage home like a swordfish,
waited for it to stop breathing and then scraped the insides clean.
I packed a decade into the storage unit, threw away the rest, and
watched a dump truck take all the memories we couldn’t find space
for. This is a special kind of betrayal, an unforgivable treason. I
don’t know who I should apologize to first.
“My Father’s House” by Rudy Francisco, from Excuse Me As I Kiss the Sky, Copyright © 2023. Courtesy of Button Publishing Inc.
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