It must be because school’s over, this morning I woke up thinking I should be in a cabin in the forest, by a lake where the only sound there is would be the distant echos of bird tweeting. But I am still on Francis. I could hear cars passing by my house in a rhythmic interval. Early morning car sounds stir up something in me, especially that initial start up in the cold mornings that takes a few tries before the car finishes grumping. I wonder if it has something to do with Dad. Did he leave in early mornings? Now I am remembering the small yellow car we had that parked outside the red steel door in the alley. Cold early mornings were like half dreams. Everything seemed hazy in the grey blue air. We were surrounded in fog puffed out by us and the grumbling yellow car. Someone from behind me put their hands over my shoulders as if to hold me back from chasing after the car when it took off. For a moment, the emptiness where the car used to be would be so big, it swelled and filled the rest of the world. 

There are so many memories of him leaving. Each scene layers on top of another, then another until they form the basis of us, of me. I have stopped saying don’t go since seven. And if I were to love his gentle smile, the warm, all encompassing fatherly love he provides, his humor, his endearing and infuriating flaws, his sweet tooth, his vulnerability… I open myself up for the stabbing pain every time he leaves. And so it is.