Balance the Sky on Your Head

by Helena Olufsen

Issue 94

Found in Willow Springs 94

Balance the Sky on Your Head

THAT MORNING, MY SON was about to become       famous, and I spent forty minutes ironing one shirt, trying to think of a reason to stay home.

      My wife’s Ford Fiesta smelled like cigarettes. It moaned like something wounded when I settled into the passenger seat. Beside me, my wife jingled the keys in the ignition. The engine coughed, then died out.

      My wife straightened her back, building confidence. She tried the engine again. It hiccupped a few times      died.

      We shared a look.

      Right about now, our son would be outside the Copenhagen stadium, a sponsor-tagged duvet coat over his football           attire clutching a pair of steaming Styrofoam cups, wondering if we’d show.

      Which we wouldn’t, we both understood. We were too late for the bus, which came through the forest only once per hour. A taxi would take too long to get here. By the time we’d reach the stadium, our son (and with him, our tickets) would have had to go inside.

      My wife’s face mirrored my own guilt. And beneath the guilt, hidden so carefully in the fragile lines around her mouth that another man might’ve missed it, there was that other thing: relief.

      For now, I focused on the guilt. The sting of our absence. Our son didn’t know it yet, but his parents were going to miss his first big game. The one his coach had said would make him a young star, a phenomenon.

      I didn’t like the way the coach talked about my son. The way he boasted           practically drooling. His hooligan joy as he slapped my back with his bear paw of a hand, so hard I couldn’t          breathe. Pointing out my son on the pitch—knees green, chocolate curls dripping sweat—as if I couldn’t spot my own kid. Saying his name like he was invincible         machine boy          unerring, unfeeling. As if he didn’t spend every night before a game crouched over the toilet, vomiting from anxiety.

      I didn’t like that my son was now alone with that man, treating him like that           a slab of meat in a slaughterhouse, a product about to hit the shelves. I knew my wife didn’t like it, either, because she lit a cigarette and smoked it in the driver’s seat, staring hard at nothing. The Ford Fiesta filled with smoke. My
wife finished one cigarette, then another. When the time came, she turned on the radio and fiddled with the stations until she found one broadcasting the game.

      We huddled together and listened.

      Most of it I didn’t understand. But I understood enough       the weight of it. By the end of the game, my freshly-ironed shirt was splattered with tears, and the damage was done: our son had become famous.

AFTER A MOURNFUL SILENCE, my wife and I went inside and curled up on the sofa to wait for our son to come home. Trying to calm ourselves with crosswords and nature poetry.

      I woke up in the deep night to the front door creaking. The cold breath of the forest whined through the house. The door slammed shut and the walls shook. I didn’t open my eyes, just kept limp on the sofa. My throat dry, my mouth full of sleep. My wife lay on top of me, her chest heaving against mine.

      I sensed him enter the living room. The pads of his feet. A wash of booze, the ghost of loud music. He had been out celebrating. He came to the sofa and stood over us for a long time, a strain in his breathing. He swallowed hard a few times. The house was so very still around him, so deep down the well of night.

      I didn’t let on that I was awake. If I had, he would’ve wanted to talk. And this wasn’t the right moment to talk. I needed more time to make the transition from sleep to wakefulness with some grace. He needed more time to sober up. We both needed my wife, his mother, awake and in full command of her sensibilities, her easy affection, to mediate between us       the subtle telepathy she shared with our son, the intuition of the womb, how they would understand things about each other without asking.

      I must’ve fallen back asleep because when I blinked it was morning, and my son was gone. The fog had cleared. I knew what to do. I went to the small kitchen and made pancakes, clinking loudly. Soon enough, the ceiling creaked and the pipes in the walls began to sing, letting me know my son had risen.

      My wife and I exchanged a meaningful look.

      When our son entered the living room in a waft of hangover, we burst into hoots and applause. He paused. Squinting against the pale sunlight that fell through the windows. His mother rushed to kiss his cheek. He smiled, touched the red lipstick smear. But his eyes were sad.

      Without meaning to, I started babbling. Passing him a plate. Explaining on and on       about the car, the engine. Laughing like it was a funny story. My wife guided him to the sofa, and I poured him a glass of orange juice. Stressing that we’d heard everything       on the radio       how immersive, how wild, as if we were right there on the pitch with him. I slid a pancake onto his plate, tousled his hair. He looked too nauseous to eat but made a valiant effort. His smile flickered like candlelight, threatening to break, but we didn’t let it, didn’t leave a quiet moment for him to gather his thoughts. We bombarded him with questions, compliments, reflections. Kept him talking until the pale sunlight had wandered from one end of the room to the other, and enough time had suddenly passed that it was too late for him to bring up our absence—his time for complaining had come and gone, and we had all collectively moved on.

      We saw on his face when he realized this, and we exchanged a smile of relief.

      That’s when my son said: “Dad, that reminds me. There’s a party at a sponsor’s house next week. Whole team’s going. Coach said I could bring you.” His tone was equal measures hope and anxiety. “If you want.”

      My wife suddenly became interested in something out the window.

      I took a sip of my orange juice, buying time. I did not want to go. My wife knew. Maybe my son knew, too, on some level. It was like yesterday when the car wouldn’t start. There had been guilt, sure, but also relief. Because at our core, neither of us really wanted to go to Copenhagen with all its noise and lights and strangers walking too fast, the shriek of machinery like a lisp in the air, the methanous pressure of so many bodies living on top of each other. Neither of us really wanted to leave our house in the woods. The quiet pines. The steady sky. Mist and roots. The flutter of something precious, a shiny-winged insect, caught between your fingers. If only I could have thought of an excuse not to attend the sponsor party, I’d feel guilty, sure, but mostly relieved. But no excuses occurred to me. I swallowed my juice and told my son: “Sure.”

MY FAMOUS SON TOOK ME to a big, white house in uptown Copenhagen and left me in the elaborate garden to parade a glass of red wine and clock a croquet ball across the buzz-cut lawn. He called this                   a party

      I was on the grass          (partying?)          wine in one hand, croquet mallet in the other, playing a boyish fifty-something- year-old who was the simultaneous dad and manager of one of my son’s teammates              his hair slicked back, his fingernails way too clean       when someone clinked their glass emphatically.

      Across the lawn, a blue tuxedo was wearing a stout, little man. The man began to give a speech. A hundred people stood in the garden and watched him, breathing quietly. I didn’t like it. There was something unnatural about so many bodies standing so still, doing the same exact thing, that thing being          nothing. Finally, applause tore through the garden. The blue tux had finished his speech. People were toasting each other. The manager dad clinked my glass with a nod like we were old comrades.

      We resumed our game. I hit the ball, missed the loop, didn’t care

      I was behind by three loops       the manager dad knocked his ball through a loop, woo-hooed       I was behind by four loops, when I noticed that, across the lawn, the blue tux was talking to my son, a fatherly hand on his shoulder. My son gestured at me. I looked away. But I sensed them making their way
towards me. I braced myself for impact.

      “So you’re the man,” the blue tux greeted me, grabbing my hand like it belonged to him, shaking it with a passion. “The man behind the boy.” He laughed heartily at what had apparently been a joke.

      The manager dad bristled with delight at this turn of events, the sheer proximity of the blue tux, who I inferred to be someone important. Possibly the owner of the house. A sponsor. At the blue tux’s joke, the manager dad gave a laugh like a chainsaw. I pitied him. Then I realized, to my horror, that my son was laughing, too. A genuine laugh. The laugh he’d had since he was a toddler—sweet and geeky—sounding like he was always just about to snort, although he never did.

      The blue tux began to gush about how the crowd loved my boy, and how he, the blue tux, had always had his eyes on my son, which I could tell was supposed to flatter me but instead creeped me out. He started waving other men over to greet me, which the other men did, patting my back and shaking my hand, too casually, too quickly, none of them taking the time to really feel my grasp on theirs, really take in my presence in this same space as them. The blue tux introduced the men, pointing at them by turn, announcing each name like it was an achievement, something to be laminated and hung on the wall of a very important room in my house.

      “The energy, the force, the sheer stamina of this one,” the blue tux was saying about my son. “Must’ve been a handful when he was a kid.” He elbowed my son. I wanted to tell him that my son was still a kid and to stop touching my kid like that.

      “Should’ve had daughters, like me,” said one of the other men with a wink. “Same amount of energy, they just use it differently. Calmer-like.”

      Daughters.

      In a breath, the air went       white.

      “I did have a daughter,” I said.

      The men all looked at me       grins faltering       melting.

      Through the white, my son looked at me. A sad tug on his lips.

      He had his mother’s eyes, brown as the earth and the roots. My daughter had had mine. Round and active with bluish daylight, moving behind her eyelids even when she slept, which she had done       that morning, as she lay in her stroller, swathed in puffy snow-white blankets, her cheeks red with winter       underneath the wide white sky, white clouds       on her lips one minute breathing, the next

      “I had no idea,” said the blue tux, a chubby hand on his heart. “I’m so sorry.”

      “I’m so sorry,” said another man.

      The blue tux turned to my son. “If you ever need to talk, son.” He grabbed his shoulder again. “That must’ve been tough on you.”

      “It was before I was born,” my son said quietly.

      All I could think about was white       white skies and       no clouds       the panic, so clean you could drink it a snowflake melting on the tip of her still-warm nose       still warm.

      The men around me were laughing. The blue tux had gotten the conversation going again. Everyone seemed relieved. Soon, my son excused himself and me. He thanked the men profusely—for what I couldn’t imagine—and we left.

THE NEXT TIME my son invited me to a sponsor party, I had an excuse ready.

      My son attended the party alone, while my wife and I stayed
home. While he was out, my wife went to the attic and fetched a box of cassettes from her old camcorder. We sat on the sofa and watched them on the VHS. Glimpses of a past life. An indulgence we allowed ourselves every now and then when our son wasn’t home. Our daughter’s brief life in pictures. Sweet and uncomplicated. Red cheeks and dimpled thighs. A little girl cooing in the bathroom sink, her skin as clear as unbruised snow, as she explored the running tap water with her fingers. She would have loved the forest, I knew, would have loved the old pines like I did, would have been able to sit beneath them for hours, eyes shut, and listen to the wind filter poetry from their branches.

      My son did well with the sponsors that night.

      Cue more parties that I didn’t attend, more late-night practices, more artificial grass stains on his laundry, more cuts and bruises than I’d thought possible to fit on a single boy body.

      He did well at practice, his coach informed me, calling our landline like it was a phone counselling service, raving about schedules and contracts.

      Cue more big games that my wife and I didn’t attend, more sleepless nights beforehand       my son dry heaving on the bathroom floor       his mother’s tender voice coaxing him to breathe, breathe       her fingertips pressed against the skin of his belly. “In.” A demonstrative inhale. “And out.” Three sets of lungs deflating in unison. And yet, for all his nerves, my son could do all these impressive things: balance a football on his forehead like a sea lion, shrug a ball from shoulder to shoulder, kick it over his own head and catch it by his heel. In our backyard, he’d line up empty coke cans on the snowy tree stumps at the edge of the woods and knock them over with his football from across the yard, never missing.

      He did well with the fans, too. Young boys in hats and scarves who dogpiled him at the grocery store, the hormones visible on their faces, breaking out in mountain chains of acne around their mouths. He knew how to work them, how to walk that balance between idol and peer, teasing and complimenting
them by turns, sweet and salty, so that they hung on his every word, the easy smile on his lips letting them know he was neither threat nor threatened.

      Cue the contract:

      A few days before my son’s eighteenth birthday, I came home to find the radio blasting a lively tune about rock-and-roll alley cats. My son was twirling his mother around the sofa table, drawing ribbons of smoke from her laughing mouth. When he saw me, he popped her down on the sofa and pulled a stapled
stack of papers from his hoodie. The contract. He handed it to me, jittery with excitement.

      I took my time reading it. Licking my fingers between pages. I didn’t understand a word. My son was saying something asinine about playing with the big boys—a hooligan turn of phrase, which sounded awkward in his mouth, out of place, as if someone had planted it between his lips. Which someone probably had.

      “What do you think?” my son blurted out.

      I looked at him.

      His smile wavered. A flicker of doubt          disappointment.

      “I don’t like it,” I said.

      From the sofa, my wife made a small, urgent noise.

      My son wasn’t smiling anymore. “Why?” he asked.

      I shook my head. I hadn’t understood much, so I didn’t have anything concrete to point out. “Gut feeling,” I said.

      My son’s expression was sober. “Ah,” he said.

      On the radio, a children’s choir was hissing like alley cats over a rock-and-roll harmonica.

      “I’m sorry, Adam,” I said. “That’s what I think.”

      He regarded me for a long time. “Right,” he said.

      Then, he turned to the sofa and held out a hand to his mother. Her face flooded with relief. My son gave a smile that almost passed as genuine, but I saw the candlelight in it       that flicker of distraction, as he proceeded to twirl his mother around the room.

      A few weeks later, my wife and I were sitting on the stumps in the backyard, when our son came up to us. The sunset filtered through the naked pines in pink tiger stripes that rolled across his face. From his expression, I immediately knew it was bad.

      “Mom,” my son said, looking at his mother. “A spot has opened up in that dormitory we talked about. The one by the stadium.”

      He never looked at me. Just stood there, in the early spring chill, a breeze in his shorts and windbreaker, that sober look in his eye, all determination, a bruise on his jaw where a ball had
struck him the other day.

      “It’s so close to practice. And school. I’d save so much time on transportation. Coach pulled some strings, so everything’s paid for.”

      “No,” I said.

      My son ignored me. Eyes locked on his mother. Fake grass on his shorts, his jaw blue from the      smash       his head bouncing back on impact, his jaw stubborn—smash       and his head bouncing back. The image replayed in my mind. Although I hadn’t even been there when the ball hit him, hadn’t thought anything of it when he came home like that, ice on his jaw, slurring to his mother that he was fine       just a stray ball.

      “Mom,” my son said gently.

      All I could see was that ball       (“Just a stray ball, mom”)       smashing into his jaw. And his head, all sweaty curls, bouncing violently back on the twig of his neck, the white sky of his eyes filling with red        smash, and his head bouncing       SMASH, and bounce       SMASH.

      Before this loop stopped playing in my mind, my son had moved out.

MY SON CAME HOME on the weekends. Every week, then every other week, then once a month. Two months passed without a visit. When he finally came home, he seemed taller, an unflattering moustache teasing his lip, a pouty brunette on his arm who glared at us like we were competition. He was too
polite, kissing his mother on the cheek and handing me a bouquet of heather they’d picked on their walk from the bus stop. He introduced his girlfriend like she was family and we were strangers, instead of the other way around. We sat in the soft heat of the backyard and talked about summer. His girlfriend commented on the scent of the pines but didn’t compliment it. She herself reeked of the city: fried onions and petrol. My son mentioned an upcoming game but didn’t invite us. He seemed restless. It was in the air around him—in his breath when he whispered an unfunny locker room joke to me; his unfocused
gaze as he smiled at his mother, their old telepathy lost. I sensed that this moment, the sun-mild backyard and our vapid occupation of it, bored him. Maybe we bored him.

      For months afterwards, we only saw him on TV. Our house became one of those homes where the TV is always on, playing reruns. My wife spent every night chain-smoking on the sofa, the shifting lights catching in the haze around her.

      One night, my son was running across the pitch, the white flash of the ball between his legs, his head haloed by neon-green grass, when another player—not a boy like my son, but a grown man—crashed into him. My wife shrieked. My son went down hard.

      The cameras loved it. The zoom was so close you could see the beads of sweat, the veins popping out, as my son rolled over in slow-motion       clutching his head, his mouth wide with a mute scream       a white sky crashing down on his head       agony.

      “Oh, no,” my wife whispered.

      On screen, nobody seemed to share her concern. Two men in blue vests jogged over at a walking pace. They knelt beside my son who was still clutching his head, his teeth clenched tight          practically frothing. “He’s fiiine,” a commentator was saying, clapping his hands impatiently into the mic. Walk it off, man.” The medics seemed to agree. One of them sprayed some ice on my son’s knee, which I hadn’t even realized was injured, while the other gave my son a brisk pat on the back. Get up, the pat seemed to say, although my son still had a hand on his head. A teammate grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet, and my son limped back to a running pace, grimacing through visible pain, his boyish features contorted with a much more adult expression, his eyes hard with a new brutality.

      “No!” my wife gasped. “No, he needs to lie down! His head—” She looked at me, as if I could somehow jump into the TV and fix it. The camera cut to the man who’d crashed into my son, spitting over his shoulder, grinning.

      “That’s vile!” my wife said.

      I sighed. “I’m going to bed.”

AUTUMN CRUMBLED TO A BLACK WINTER. Every now and then, our son would call our landline, sounding distracted, his voice crackly with background noise, the connection dipping in and
out, as he entered elevators and metros.

      “Got any plans for your birthday?” I asked him, as spring drew nearer.

      My son’s breathing was too loud, his voice scratchy, as he replied: “Not really. I have a game the week after so probably just practice.”

      “Why don’t you come home?” I sprang at the opportunity. “We can celebrate like the old days. Just the three of us.”

      There was a hiss of static on the other end. A pause. I held my breath. For a moment, I thought the call had dropped.

      Then came my son’s voice: “Sure, dad. That sounds nice.”

ON OUR SON’S NINETEENTH BIRTHDAY, we got up early. White mist pressed against the windows. The snow in the yard was thawing, the grass wet.

      We were ecstatic.

      We dressed the house in flags and balloons, cranked up the radio, baked a chocolate cake the same shade as his curls. My wife put on eye shadow, while I picked a nice shirt to iron.

      I had told my son six p.m., but when six p.m. rolled around, he hadn’t come. Nor had he come by six thirty, or six forty-five. By seven, we began to worry. The roads were dark and icy. Maybe he was just being careful, driving slowly. A delay was certainly possible. But so was an accident. Somewhere in a ditch         swathed in puffy snow-white          still warm.

      When I called his cell, it went straight to voicemail. I put my arm around my wife, sick with fear. I called his girlfriend, but she didn’t pick up. I called again. My wife was crying by the time I called his coach. When the coach picked up, it took him a while to understand who I was. When he finally did, he told
me not to worry. He didn’t know where our son was exactly, but he’d overheard a few of ‘his boys’ (our son’s teammates) discussing a big birthday party tonight. He gave me their numbers, but I didn’t take them down. Just thanked him and hung up.

      We sat in silence for a long time. Surrounded by flags and balloons. Staring at the cake on the sofa table, a flicker in the icing from the muted TV.

      We waited two more hours. Then we went to bed.

WHEN I WOKE UP, my wife had taken down the decorations and thrown out the cake. We didn’t talk about it.

      My son called a few days later. He didn’t mention his birthday, just chatted like usual, asked about his mother, the house, the yard, kept me talking, until suddenly, the sun had wandered from one end of the living room to the other, and too much time had passed for me to bring up his birthday—my chance to
complain had come and gone, and we had moved on.

      When I realized this, I wondered if he’d done it on purpose. The way his mother and I did it back when we missed his game. Had he known back then that we did it on purpose? Had he held
on to that knowledge       that anger for all this time?

      That night, I re-watched the old camcorder cassettes. My baby daughter, so simple, so easy. Pure potential. I could imagine her nineteenth birthday. Her blowing out the candles, making a secret wish to go ice skating on the forest pond, just the three of us, hand in hand on the blue ice. There would have been no football, no bruises, no big crowds. Just us.

      A stranger’s voice rang in my head: Should’ve had daughters, like me. One of those insufferable sponsor men. Yet he was right. I should have had daughters. For the first time in my life, I allowed myself to think the unforgivable:

      It should have been my daughter here with me instead of him.

      For a moment, I sat in horror at myself.

      Then I sprang to my feet. I didn’t know what to do, just that I wanted to get away. Escape the sick feeling that was rising in my throat. My feet clattered against the cassettes on the floor. All of
them wearing my daughter’s name, her year of birth. Not one wore my son’s.

      Was that right? There had been times in those early years when my wife had brought out the camcorder to capture our son, but every time she began filming, we’d realized she was taping over our daughter and stopped. We’d meant to buy new cassettes, but the video store was all the way in the city.

      I closed my eyes and pictured my son as he was back in those days. His chubby toddler body, wobbly and uncoordinated. Squealing with delight, as he sprinted naked across the fairy-lit yard, ploughing through the snow, which powdered his face and curls. As crazy and strong-minded and utterly unreasonable as he was today       despite the nerves, despite what anyone told him. So full of light and noise and life. A whole city in his own right. A full forest.

      My wife poked her head into the living room, and I realized that I had called out for her. “What?” she said quietly.

      “We need to go to Copenhagen,” I said.

      She looked at me like I’d lost my mind. Then, her eyes went to the TV       our daughter’s pink face, laughing toothlessly and I saw the gentle grief that poured from every crevice       every chink between the floorboards, every loose roof tile. I had never seen her face before when the cassettes were on, never dared to look.

      Now, I took her hand.

      She started, as if caught in something private.

      “We need to go to Copenhagen,” I said. “To Adam.”

THAT MORNING, THE MORNING OF the game      we were back in my wife’s smoky Ford Fiesta. My wife jingled her keys in the ignition. The engine coughed. Died out.

      My wife straightened her back and tried again. And this time, she kept trying. The engine spluttered, whined, died out       over and over, but my wife kept turning her keys, kept stomping the pedal       a twitch in her lip, her lit cigarette crumbling in the cup holder. I got out and pushed the car downhill. Mud streaked my trousers, my collar dampened. The car gained speed. The engine roared to life. I chased the open door and sprang into the passenger seat. My wife grinned at me. We shared a giddy look.

      Forty minutes later, we reached the stadium. We braved through the narrow alleys, herding bicycles and jaywalkers in front of us, blinded by a throb of strange lights and odors. The signposts were scratched and battered. We had no way of knowing if our parking was legal.

      We left the car clinging to each other and were promptly swept up by a mob of painted faces. The stadium appeared between the faded brick buildings, huge and imperial. The crowd carried us through the entrance turnstiles. My wife gave a small squeak, as a big woman in a bulletproof vest patted her down. I grabbed her waist, and we squeezed through a sea of Viking hats and beer bellies, gruff shouts and beards full of ketchup. The air so thick with perspiration, you could taste it. Our seats were sticky. We were the only ones sitting. Everyone else was on their feet and chanting nonsensically at the empty pitch.

      Then, a distorted voice came over the speakers. A roar went
up from the stands, and the crowd around us swelled with excitement. Hoots, cat-whistles, fists pumping in the air, beer spilling everywhere. In an act of self-defense, I stood and pulled my wife to her feet, lest we be crushed by the crowd. I barely registered the players entering the pitch below. Only when my wife gasped, did I remember they were the sole reason we had come to this deathtrap. Or one of them was.

      The two teams were shaking hands. I looked desperately from player to player, searching for my son. The crowd was singing, waving their scarves, saliva flying from unhinged jaws.

      “Oh!” My wife grabbed my arm, her voice tearful.

      I trailed her gaze, and there       a bounce of chocolate curls. The flash of his nervous grin. His cheeks red with adrenaline. My son.

      For a moment, I forgot how to breathe. His hand was raised in salute to the fans, as he walked on neon-green skies. It had been so excruciatingly long since I’d last seen him. My throat stung. I would have given anything—the house, the pines—for him to look at me. Just for a split second.

      That’s when my wife leapt into the air, waving her arms wildly, and screamed:

      “ADAAAAAAAAAAM!”

      The man beside me dropped his hotdog. People turned to stare.

      On the pitch, my son’s head snapped up.

      I would have never thought him able to hear us over the noise, yet there he was: frozen, looking in our direction. His attention drawn to his mother by some otherworldly force, that soft telepathy between them, the intuition of the womb. His eyes found his mother and widened. A moment later, they were on me.

      On instinct, I raised my arms above my head and wooed like a maniac.

      My son’s face twisted with incredulity. A teammate tugged on his arm, and he stumbled towards the huddle that was forming in front of their goal.

      His mother waved.

      Slowly, uncertainly, as if he still couldn’t believe we were really here, my son waved back. A teammate swung an arm around his shoulders and pulled him into the huddle. The team jumped a few times, shouted something unintelligible, and broke apart. My son appeared from the huddle, looking dazed. His eyes scoured the stands, as he jogged backwards to his position on the pitch.

      When he found us, his mouth split into an ear-to-ear grin. He laughed. I could hear it from the stands (even though I couldn’t surely, even though there was no way.) That sweet, geeky laugh, always on the verge of a snort. The simplest sound in the world.

      THE MORNING AFTER THE GAME, my son came to visit. His mother was still asleep, so we decided to surprise her with breakfast. My son began to cook, while I drew the curtains around the living room to let in the pinkish light. When I returned my attention to my son, I saw him standing in the small, resin-wooded kitchen. The cramped space caused him to stoop slightly, making him look grotesquely large, like a character from Alice in Wonderland      all grown up. There was an awkward charm to the sight. For the first time in years, I wished for my wife’s old camcorder. I would have loved to eternalize that half minute when he still didn’t notice me watching:

      Pine mist coming through the half-open window, a sizzling pot on the stove before him. His lips moving with an old hooligan chant, as he used a butter knife to scrape something burnt off the stove. Sporting an unbuttoned flannel shirt that used to be mine. His curls had grown long, his chest was toned and winter-pale. Whistling an adlib, he dropped a pair of eggs into the pot and adjusted the heat with a soft frown. Then, he turned and saw me. “What?” he said, a smile blooming at the corner of his mouth. Click. End of recording.

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