You Or Your Memory

My subconscious and I are currently at odds, and it has won this round as I am afraid to fall back to dreams for fear existence will cease.

I had just come home, but instead of following normal streets, I drove to my grandparents.

I walked in alone and stood in the dining room, wondering why no one was here for the meal set out.

And I heard the car drive up, and walked to the window, and peered out of curtains older than two generations.

And there was my father.

Here's where my subconscious slighty shifts reality, as I calmly walked out and hugged him.

I felt myself remembering how long it has already been. And then I asked. "Why aren't you dead?"

He turns to me and says "I have been quietly driving around drunk for a very long time."

And suddenly others pull up and set out food outside. And suddenly its night. And suddenly my father is sitting on the grass as if it were just another dream.

I walked up to him, towered over his shell, informed him that he had faked his death.

He informed me that he had faked his death. He reached for me, to hug me again. But I felt my body and my anger walking away.

The thought that I could see him again after all of that mourning made me hate him. I had done my grieving, I deserved to never see him again. I opened the car door, let out sparks and yellow jackets. I started to drive, and woke up in my bed in Massachusetts, almost relieved that he was dead.

I have not dreamed about my father since he stopped leaving quiet voicemails for me on otherwise loud nights.

It scares me that my subconscious has been holding him from me. It worries me that I walked away and did not hug him goodbye for the final time. It kills me that I will always feel tricked by some existential slight at hand, never to know all of the truth.

To think I had assumed that tonight would only bring works cited, physiology reading, and just a pinch of loneliness.

I guess those are the nights you really have to worry about.

I forget December's uncanny ability to bring out the ghosts.