A Hope and Dreams

Whenever I sit on mother’s porch, I think of your ghost. Your shadow sits beside mine, as the stars race by. Our hands reach over the rotten wood between us, sweaty summer palms clutched together.

My father and I only speak at sunset, and although his eyes are drawn to the models in his hands, I know his attention is solely on me. Every day, he asks me if I have anything I want to tell him, as if expecting some cloying emotional anecdote to immediately flow forth. I try to force the words forward, my eyes locked on the back of his head, mouth forming soundless syllables. When the sun finally dips beneath the horizon, he turns to me, with nothing but a smile to offer, and I am content to give him the same.

Every afternoon, I find myself drawn from my storybooks by the exuberant cries of the long-haired child across the street. Every day, the child plays the same games, wind whipping their hair into their face, forcing them to spit it out between laps of the turf yard, stray strands only temporarily muffling their joyful screams. The noise is sometimes overwhelming, to the point that I consider walking out to confront the child myself, finally putting a face to the inarticulate yells that haunt my afternoon. But my hair chokes the words before they can escape from my mouth, and instead I listen to the child call out for the both of us.