When You Were Here With Me

By Yasaswee Yashmin

Dad,

I hate it that you decided to leave,

And you hated it when you were here with me.

Your letter did not see the rising sun of yet another day, nor could it hear the shuffled footsteps of the postman. I have been waiting on my toes on the front porch, and have counted the number of cobblestones in Mrs. Wilson’s yard. The mailbox gets dug into every day with my fingernails filled with dirt and no treasure is ever found. 

The cruelty you showed leaving us behind this way knows no bounds in my field of unforgotten dreams, that you set on fire with ease. Mother is miserable, sitting with the dried flowers. Yes, they are sprayed with your spite and anger, yet they are cherished. I wish you would have done the same for us as well. This family of five was not something you had asked for, nor had she. But did she or we deserve to be punished for what Grandpa decided your fate should be? I should applaud your courage for walking away so easily, like death stealing one’s breath away. Brother is seeking to get married to our landlord’s daughter soon to stop them from snatching away our home. His lover across the window crying while he gets your wedding tux altered to fit him was not even the last of his wishes. Melissa begs to go to school, and our lame excuses that they shut it down do not convince her. She is smart, just like you. But she does not keep a packed trunk hidden on the topmost shelf, ready to run away. I guess she got that from Mother. 

Do I hate it more that you decided to leave,

Or had I hated it more when you were here with me?

The letters you promised to write got lost on the way maybe, Mother says. I told her I wish the air was my friend so it would bring the letters back. I know they must be lighter than feathers, the ink you would spill would form just a few words. Well, I assumed you write the same way as you used to speak. I was tired of reading between the lines, and listening to what you never said. All you had spoken about loathing us and wishing we would forever go away got lost in translation and I heard them as “I love you.” I wish I had known sooner that the bread from your plate that you would shove in Melissa’s mouth was to stop her cries from piercing your ears. When your stomach growled with hunger and you filled it with ‘medicine’, that always made you hit us, was not a cure, but the illness itself. 

Mother is stupid. She thinks saying that you left with someone you loved more will make us hate you less. But I know you. You could never love. Just as I know that the marks of your belt that I still have on my back were not for discipline. The blood down Melissa’s little legs that Thursday night was not an illness, nor a natural ‘woman problem’ arriving early. The secret glances that you and the doctor exchanged while she got stitches and writhed in pain were not of concern, but villainy. You could never love anyone. 

Mother thinks she can keep the fact forever sealed in her heart’s locker that she found you with your wrist slit that night near the fireplace. 

But I have the key to that locker that will forever remain buried in the safe of my heart. It will be safe along with the ashes of the letter in the fire discussing the price of my little sister, and the blade with your blood.

I still show the wait in despair on the back of my head to Mother, concealing the smile in the front. 

I still hate that I had to make you leave, 

But I had hated it more when you were here with me.

With anything but love,

Roger

By Yasaswee Yashmin