Even
   joseph altamore

​

Even a hurricane, chopped to pieces, broken down to its critical essences, will make a kite fly, cajole dandelions into raising their sleepy manes. I am pulling apart a hurricane and lining my pockets with it. I give rain to the garden, wind to the sailboat. I flood the empty swimming pools. I am pulling apart my father and lining myself with him. Here is the signature laughter, and there, hidden deep within the penetralium of a soul, there is the confidence. Why doesn't the spider end up tangled within his own web? The spider asks this. Even when he tries to, he just can’t. We cannot kill ourselves with home, regardless how lethal the dosage. A poison we have become immune to, no matter how caustic. I don't know what I was hoping for that morning, descending those familiar carpeted steps. I think I was hoping for something definitive: confirmation in the form of a balled fist, a face gnarled with derision. Something to cast my hatred in cement or iron. But they weren't enough. They are never enough. I am pulling apart my father and leaving the ugly parts out. Here is the handshake, the walk. Here is the piercing gaze. Here are the out-turned feet. I am strong. I am ambitious. I am my father. I am my father, speaking on my own behalf, and I can tell you I know nothing of the bruises, of the pain. I hear no screaming. Even the birds push their young from the nests. Even the trees will not bend to save them.