A penny for my thoughts. Oh no, I'll sell them for a dollar, 711Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBqU8NYrKhT
They're worth so much more after I'm a goner.711Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFqmKX3ZAKy
And maybe then you'll hear the words I've been singing,711Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwPyKU9Ae19
Funny, when you're dead how people started listening.
- 'If I Die Young', The Band Perry
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I did not read the letter then, it took me an awfully long time to even touch the slightly yellow piece of paper. My mother was very adamant that I read it, telling me, and I quote, "it would be really a weight off of my shoulders, to be honest. Hiding it from you...it felt like a lie..." She resolved to not say very much after that, at least, not much to me. I did, however, hear her exchange a few kind words with Jason and Max. Though, I'm not rightly sure that kind is the best adjective to describe her flying rage and piercing wails. No, not kind in the slightest. But I can't say I blame her.
Clinging to the letter still, I did not unravel the folds. Those folds were the only thing separating me from my father's dying wishes; those folds were the only thing keeping my head clear and my emotions stable. Stable...Again with the unfitting adjectives. My father was the most influential person of my childhood. Even my art teacher who helped me to find my passion and get a scholarship to art school couldn't compare to the experiences he allowed me to store, and now I was here about to read his own personal memoir on life and death. Nerve-racking, to describe the least of it.
I couldn't read it there. Not with my family around me, not like this. I wiped my face on my hoodie sleeves, unaware of the exact moment I began to cry. It felt as though my lungs gave in to the pressure, no longer willing to do their natural job. It felt as if my heartbeat was too fast, too excited, that it would beat it's way into my rib cage and destroy my chest. I felt constricted, I felt trapped, I felt cornered, and I had to get away.
In a disorderly manner, I folded up the paper, and stuffed it into my front pocket. My hands instinctively brought my fingers to the tips of my hair, and I tangled my nails into the knots, calming my breathing. Since I was actually leaving the house, I could not ad would not allow myself to panic. Panic attacks were pretty much the worst thing ever, or at least to me. I ruffled my hair and pressed my hands into my scalp for a few more moments before withdrawing my hands and pulling my hoodie sleeves over my knuckles. The only feeling I had was the need to get out of the house, because at every turn I saw fading memories of my father, my real father, and that had to stop.
Surprisingly, I didn't ask to leave. Neither my mother nor Jason tried to stop me from leaving, so I guessed they decided to give me this time to myself. My grieving period was long gone-seven years gone, to be exact-but I was still trying to fill the hole inside of me. The door slammed shut on it's creaking, rusted hinges. (Just another example of my home's growing age. The house was over fifty years old when my parents moved in, and though I begged for a new one after my father's all-too-soon passing, a new house never came. Mother couldn't give up the memories that I was so eager to repress.)
The footpath that lead away from the front door of my house was covered in the rainbows of reds and golds in autumn days. Leaves were strewn about from the large trees that surrounded my neighborhood block. It's funny how normal, and how beautiful, of a day it was on the outside world. While inside, everything was gloomy and rambunctious, but on the outside the world was business as usual. On that day, I hated the world for being so beautiful. How could it dare to be bright and lovely, while I was here, my insides miserable with the ice of reminiscing tragedies, and still the sun glowed so beautifully on the horizon without a care of something so little and unimportant as I. In that moment, I was so small, and the world was so still, and nothing mattered but the glow of the sun on the horizon and the crunch of the leaves beneath my toes.
It took a long while for me to pull myself back into reality, and by then it was almost dusk. I had clutched the letter so tight in my hands that it had now a permanent crease along where my hand had rested. I tried to smooth it out, but in vain, for my hand print would not return from the paper back into my hand. It would have to stay there. It's going to be too dark to read soon, Chris, I heard myself saying to myself. I actually said it, in a whispery voice, as I sometimes do when I need to force myself to do something that I meet with reluctance. You need to open in, Chris, I whispered, now. Open the letter.
And I did so, with wavering sanity and shaking hands. A simple task of unraveling a sheet of paper took literally the most effort as anything else in my entire life. Sitting among the now moonlit marsh area that sat about 500 yards from the back door on my home, I looked at the spidery scrawl that was my father's. I could not get over the fact that it was so similar to mine: leaning just slightly to the left, letters narrow and loopy, neat but also kind of scribble-like. The pencil was dark, as if he had pushed down carefully, precisely, and firmly. It was as if he had to make completely sure that the words would be there and legibly so.
So I studied the handwriting on the paper for a while, and eventually when I mustered up the courage to do so, I began to read.
ns 15.158.61.8da2
