Essays
By Zachary Morris
One-Inch Picture Frame
The rank smell seeping from his pores nauseated me. Like a sweaty, alcohol-marinated sausage, the stench repulsed. But I didn’t care. I buried my tear-streaked face in his soft belly, the teardrops diffusing through the gray cotton of his undershirt. He wrapped his arms tightly around my bony little shoulders as I choked for air through the thick fog of the morning after. With the eggs sizzling on the stove, we stood uninterrupted in this passionate embrace as the world dissolved around us.
The night before, I prayed that he would forget. The next morning would be painful as I quelled my heartache. “Do you have any idea what you said?! Do you know how alone that made me feel?!” But I would say nothing.
In the half instant before I awoke, however, it was I who forgot. Feeling the crust of congealed tears on my eyelashes and the dull sinal ache that accompanies a night of unabashed bawling, I remembered. I tossed aside my blankets and walked warily to the bathroom where I splashed some cool water on my still burning eyes. I tiptoed down the stairs and, pushing aside the blanket that hung nailed across the staircase, I passed from the hot discomfort of the upstairs into the air-conditioned living room. Turning the corner into the kitchen, I saw him hunched over the stove. I recognized the same grubby undershirt of the previous night, though its wearer had been cleansed by a deep slumber. The desires to both leap into his arms and sprint ferociously out of his life were as pressing as they were opposite. I felt paralyzed. He turned to look at me, and in that instant, I knew he remembered. His cheeks and eyelids were drooping with penitence. He looked like an old man. Our eyes met, and without parting lips, we began to speak.
“I’m so sorry,” said his eyes.
“I know,” mine replied. “You don’t have to…”
“I love you more than you will ever know.”
I fell into the comfort of his embrace for what seemed like an eternity. Our heartbeats synchronized, and in that singular moment, we were more purely father and son than ever before. Something indescribable, yet intensely perceptible, changed that morning. I understood my dad. Although he was not the hero I had so innocently imagined him to be, he would always do his damnedest to give me the world. In his humanness, he would fail. It was a feeling unlike any other – this companionship that transcends even death.