.
She murmurs things the little boy doesn’t want to hear, nuzzling his cheek; folding, pushing blankets closer to his torso.
The engine would have woken him anyhow.
And the soft creak of the stairs.
Whispering you’ll wake h–
It must be a shopping bag in his hand and it must be him, it can’t be anyone but him; it smells like him. Maybe a little bitter, like the inside of a metal tube, like gripping a cold armrest; mostly just deodorant, or aftershave–whatever it is. The boy is already crying. It is the only sensible thing he can do. He reaches out his arms to a father dumbfounded.
He says, hello, and, what’s the matter? i missed you
These are nice things. They are good, and there is a kiss on the forehead to go with them, a fond chuckle, a sweep of his brow. His hands are big. They are so big.
They could
[ stop magma from licking the clouds ]
maybe.
The little boy believes it.
what is it? was it a nightmare?
An arm comes around his little shoulders; his father, hands warm and forearms chilly, takes up the rest of the space on the small twin bed. A migratory bird, only there when the weather is fair. But with a voice that lights up each morning.
The boy nods, wiping his tears carefully with his cuff, but still they come.
it’s okay little guy, just a bad dream, just a bad dream.
A kiss is just a temporary charm. And dreams can have a basis in fact.
In the bag is a picture book, written in his father-tongue, with words that he can understand but cannot read. So his father, half cradling him with his free arm, reads to him. There is no room for speaking. He doesn’t want his mouth to make the shapes of
GROTESQUE words.
Even lambs feel the love and protection of Jesus. So why not him.
He doesn’t ask this as a question, because he does not want to hear her answer, again.
His father doesn’t know it, but his presence is a literal shield, a love that cannot be quantified—and the boy should know, because, starved of it, he has tried to gulp it all down, but has never reached the bottom of it. As far as he knows, his father is love personified. But if he knew, if he knew, infinity would become finite, and the universe would collapse in on itself.
.
2018. Flash fiction piece is an excerpt from SLEEP PARALYSIS.