A year after and he hardly looks or sounds anything like my Dad. No voice except buzzing mechanical sounds from a machine that I often can’t understand or he’s too tired to use. He’s been working all morning at learning how to say our names. My name is harder to say than my sister’s, I am told. More air sounds to her name’s throat sounds. The air sounds are harder because he’s not breathing through his mouth anymore, but through a hole in his throat and also because I know I’m often harder to say. This is not exaggerated. This is realistically me.
Something about the fluid and the tissue of his body, even with the packs they’ve been pumping in for 10 months now, makes it so that I can press my fingers into him and an impression stays there when I want it to spring back like healthy. My more than uncomfortable pile of prying fingers is pressing in, over communicating because I don’t know where else to go. I am packing all of my words in before there is the chance of forever space and I won’t be able to tell him just how and where it hurts. Or just how and where I love. I don’t know a place worth going without words- even the ones you wish would spring back like healthy.
