I curl up in your bed, wrapping myself in the blanket, breathing in deeply. The bed shifts as you climb in, laying your body down next to mine as you wrap yourself around me. Your knees cradle into mine; my back curves into your chest and I can feel you breathing. Your head rests on top of mine, cheek to cheek. I feel your breath mixing with mine as it warms my face. Our arms entwine, squeezing close and tight; our fingers interlock like a knot.

We lay in silence knowing that there will always be words that have to be left unsaid, and maybe it’s better that way. Miscommunication snakes from the tips of tongues, squeezing into ears, and sinks into the crevices of our brains giving birth to seeds of doubt. Suspicion tears through our chests like a knife, splitting ribs and cutting off heartstrings.

And ‘I Love You’ can’t make up for all the words that have been lost, all the ways we have been left behind, and torn apart.

And ‘I Miss You’ can’t mend the space that has grown between us.



Laying in your arms I know that I will never know.



I close my eyes and try to feel

the beat of your pulse,

the inhale and exhale of your breath,

your skin warming mine.



Sleep comes with sand from the hourglass

I’ve been working on the book I’m writing about my dad. I guess this is a good thing, because it’s a project I’ve been trying to conquer for years. Writing is really the only way I can purge the thoughts that constantly plague my head, so theoretically this experience should be healing; I’m not so sure, though. Either way, I know it’s just something that I have to do.

The one thing that I’ve always been scared of is forgetting. What if I get the details wrong? What if I can’t remember everything the way that it actually happened? What if I forget the most important parts? What if I don’t even know what the important parts are? The whole process gets almost completely overwhelming, but it also reminds me just how important this project is.

Today I’ve been thinking about him a lot. There wasn’t even a trigger this time. I was in the shower when suddenly it hit me that his birthday is coming up next month. October 1st always hits me like a rock. For the first couple of years after he died I would try and do something for him on his birthday, but after a while it just felt pointless and made me feel even more hopeless.

My stepmom sold our house. She made sure to ask all of us if it was okay, and we said yes. Today though, it really hit me hard. That was the last piece tying me to him. The six of us lived in that house. We built a home there together. We were a family. I’m not going to delude myself into thinking that the two years I spent living there were the happiest of my life; they weren’t. I won’t say that things were perfect, or that we were the happiest family. As far as life goes, it felt pretty normal amidst the abnormal circumstances that surrounded our lives together.

 You know, I don’t really think about what my life was like when I lived there. As far as “normalcy” goes, my life has been pretty far from what most people experience; it never felt that way for me, though, until now. I never really thought about how far from average everything I’ve been through has been. Maybe it’s because I’ve grown into a “well-adjusted”, “emotionally stable” twenty-something, (now isn’t that a contradictory statement?) Maybe it’s because of my strong ability to rationalize and look at life from an objective perspective. I don’t know. Does it even matter? But, during my two years living at my stepmom’s house with my dad and our family, it really felt like life was normal.

My parents were happy; there were sibling rivalries between my sister and my stepbrother because they were the middle children and that’s what middle children do; Elise was babied and we all wanted to spoil her because she was the youngest; I was an angsty teen completely immersed in my solipsism; normal.  We didn’t think that our life there would be so temporary. The idea that things would change so fast never even crossed my mind. I was fifteen. I was convinced that my dad was going to pull through and nothing would change.

If you had asked me 9 years ago what would happen in the year to follow, I would have never expected that just a year after starting a life with my new family, I would have to watch my dad die. That I would have to live down the hall from a makeshift hospital room separated from the rest of our house by a curtain. A CURTAIN. That I would hear my dad yelling out in pain every night before I went to sleep, even after I was forced to move upstairs to my sister’s room. That after a certain point he couldn’t even form words anymore and all that was left was a skeleton; skin and bones and atrophied muscle. I look back at those two years and I don’t know what I was thinking. The reality of the situation was that my dad was dying and we were trying to build a life rooted in denial.

Do I regret it, though? No, absolutely not. Those two years were the beginning of the most painful experience of my entire life, but I wouldn’t take it back for the world.

Those two years were the last two “normal” years of my life, even if they were saturated in false hope, denial, and foolish naivety. When I think back now, it’s really hard to picture the parts that my stepmom remembers so clearly; my parents’ wedding; the honeymoon-turned-into-family-vacation to Disney; saying three good things about our day at the dinner table; the funny stories that my stepmom loves to tell, the ones that I can barely remember anymore.  I don’t know how she manages to remember so much good, when looking back the parts that stick out the most in my memory are the ones that sit in the pit of my stomach like a rock.

I don’t know why this is hitting me now. I guess because before, every time I thought about my dad I knew that I could visit my stepmom at our house and it wouldn’t feel like he’s completely gone. I could sit in the living room, and I wouldn’t delude myself into thinking he was still there with me, I’ve never been able to “feel like he was still with me” the way other people swear they have felt after a loved one passes, but it would make me feel better. It was comforting. His last month with us, I would sit with him in that living room after school every day. He was right down the hall from me. When I visited my stepmom I could sleep in the living room and remember the nights I slept curled up on the couch next to his hospital bed in that same room and it was comforting. I don’t have that anymore, and I guess that’s what bothers me the most.

I feel like I’ve had so many moments like this, these moments where it feels like I’ve “finally realized” he’s gone for good. There have been so many, and each time I slowly slip into acceptance, but I can’t help feeling the twinge of pain in my chest reminding me that I have lost one more connection that kept him alive for a bit longer. 

I have my stories. I have my memories. I have journals upon journals of entries just like this one documenting each realization. I write down everything because I don’t want to lose anymore; I don’t know how much more I can afford to lose.

So, I will keep writing. I don’t really know what else there is I can do.  

“I have to talk to you about your mother’s health.”

I’m sent spiraling backwards seven and a half years. That little white waiting room. The TV mounted in the corner set to silent. Those uncomfortable plastic chairs. The twenty-seven steps down that tiled hallway to stand in the doorway of that sterile room. The inappropriate sun-rays beaming through those winter windows; the room shouldn’t have been so bright.

I hear her voice and the only words I can make out through every choked syllable, “I love you.” And I only see his face.

The gasping breaths. The whisper of words being squeezed from vocal cords. The barely audible tones vibrating from a tired throat. I try to keep my own voice steady. Try to slow my pounding heart. Try to stop the salt from spilling from my eyes because, hell, my insides have been drained bone-dry.

Please, not again.

No more hospital beds, monitors, tubes. No more tests or waiting. No more bad news.

I sit in this quiet empty room, wishing I had something to pray to, knowing that even if I did that it wouldn’t make a difference anyway.

High hopes sink fast.

It’s the sand that pours over the sides of my shoes;
wet footsteps along the shore-side.
The rocks my clumsy feet stumble over trip any illusion of poise or grace.

It’s the lack of caution.

The sun beats down on my shoulders,
my exposed back,
bounces off the water’s edge;
the water that is too smooth to be a part of sound;
too clear.

It’s the displaced security.

And I believed that line about chasing the curves of the earth;
tracing map-lines and
creating time;
and I believed in the sand from the hourglass
when I didn’t know what to believe in at all.

Fingers trace smooth skin,
the curve of a clavicle,
spine,
hipbones.
Eyelids flutter closed.
Breath quickening,
steadying slow.
Always
just almost touching in the simulacrum of reality.

It’s the sun that rises over heavy eyes;
it’s the sleep that’s missed through the
slip like space;
fingers almost touching
walking by the shore-line.

So, not only am I in the process of moving for the 16th time in my 24 years of life, but my Stepmom is also working on settling into her new home. I saw her a couple days ago when she picked me up from the airport, and she told me that somehow during her big move my dad’s ashes got misplaced in a box and ended up in storage. Of course, we ended up laughing over it, because if my dad were alive he’d find it kind of funny too. I guess that’s just our humor.

Well, today she called to tell me that she had gone to the storage unit with her intern Alyssa and my stepsister Elise to find my dad amidst the many boxes. Luckily, he wasn’t that hard to find; he was stored neatly in a box right next to a couple of Land Before Time videotapes. Alyssa (who never knew my dad), jokingly said, “Oh, I guess Tom likes dinosaurs!”

Before my dad was put into a medically induced coma he was in a delirious state from the mix of painkillers and the cancer. He would have his lucid moments, but they were getting few and far between. He’d lay in bed staring up at the skylights and hear voices from what he said were angels. Sometimes he said that his father or my stepmom’s mother would come and visit him. One night though, he was just laying in bed with his eyes closed when he suddenly started smiling.

My stepmom and I were in the room with him, and it was getting pretty late; we thought he had fallen asleep when that slow clever smile spread across his face. My stepmom and I looked at each other to be sure that we were seeing the same thing, and then she asked him, “Tom, what are you smiling at?” He shook his head, still smiling that “I know something you don’t know” smile. “Is someone talking to you? Did someone tell you something?” He continued smiling and opened his eyes, something that rarely happened at this stage and said, “The dinosaurs.”

My stepmother and I sat there, not quite knowing what to make of his statement, and I asked, “Do you know what happened to the dinosaurs? Why did they all die?” and he shook his head, still smiling as he closed his eyes again.

We never really figured out what “The dinosaurs” meant to him. There’s a lot we never really figured out about what he went through and what he saw and what was real and what was just in his head… but when little things like this happen, I kind of wonder if maybe he knew something more after all.