A Tergo, Lupi.

"Braced my body for a beating, a distant recollection from childhood coming back to haunt me." But fathers get old and weak, age steals the physical dominance and it was just angry words that were delivered instead of angry blows. How ironic that it was last night that we watched Les Quatre Cents Coups. Call me Doniel.

Alone in the kitchen you looked at me with the empty can of black olives in your hand and mouthed the words “olive juice.” A shockwave of sensation through my spine. A tunnel with just you and me. Thoughts of four years ago, the fear of this phrase, what to say, how to respond, panic buttons, sirens. Then the world came crashing back in and I realized too late that the last of the break walls has been smashed and it’s too late to do anything about it, just too late. Wondering when it happened, when did I let my guard down? What was I thinking when I said it wouldn’t hurt? This was my fear and of course, like a moth to a flame I find myself frying up, a faint “zap!” resonating through an otherwise quiet night. The despair and lunacy that registers with that zap, and the silence afterwards that sickens you. The fear that you will one day just be gone, the same ending to so many varied stories. I had tried keeping you at arm’s distance from my heart, but one night this weekend the sentinel fell asleep and the front door went unguarded. Oh this society teeming with facts.

And after you had gone the gravity of the statement sunk deep into my temples. “I just can’t take this anymore, going to snap, it’s like being in jail only there aren’t tangible bars there, which is worse, much worse. How do you attain freedom when the bars just follow you around all the time? When there isn’t even a consistent idea of what you’ve done that’s so horrible.” I searched in vain for something to say, and only mouthed “olive juice, too,” when there was no one there to see it.