I saw his frame in the morning sun as my jog came to a tired
end. He was just sitting there looking into the city - a lone silhouette
against towering steel infernos of dreams.
"Mind if I take a seat?"
He turned, "Its a free country."
We sat in silence waiting for the day to begin as cubicles would become home for a while,
feeding our internal claustrophobia. Just as I started to go, I turned back and
asked.
"Are you okay?"
He gave a tired grin and said, without turning.
"I will be."
And such was routine. Every morning before office space
swallowed me whole, I would sit and talk.
And sometimes unable to stop myself, I would ask that
fatalistic question of the ages.
"Are you okay?"
"I will be."
Today that figure isn't on the bench. He is in front of me,
resting for the rest of time in a casket that seems to be too big for him.
Little men in this big world.
I guess my father was a strange man. We were distant, even
if we inhabited the same world. He never did get over mom leaving - even as
years turned to dust and our windows gathered the soot that comes from neglect.
I gazed into those peaceful eyes holding so much pain. Well,
that isn't there anymore, right dad? Memories and all those mortal things are
for the living to bear. The ones left behind.
A voice came from faraway, as if through a dense fog. I
think it were a cousin, there were so many- not that it made much of a difference. They were all strangers in the end to me, the only familiarity left in the ruin of a desolate husk.
"Are you okay?"
And the words seem too natural - yet appeared in vindictive
torment through the haze of a building torrent ripe with unwept tears.
"I will be."
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