One Pyrrhic Victory

Saturn Devouring His Son

Nobody heard him, the dead man,  
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought  
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,  
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always  
(Still the dead one lay moaning)  
I was much too far out all my life  
And not waving but drowning.

— Not Waving but Drowning, Stevie Smith

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Isaac did not forgive his father
When they returned home he saw
In the sidelong glances of his father's eyes
That everything had changed
Under the cold knife
That kissed his skin on the mountain
He knew they could never
Be the same again
"You were my father,"
He wanted to say
"So why couldn't you be
my father?"

— And My Father's Love Was Nothing Next To God's Will by Amatullah Bourdon

Dad was dead, that's all there was to it. He was gone and the planet Kendall had been orbiting around his entire life went with him; a moon now cast adrift, a ship lost at sea. Insomnia and substance abuse had been his go-to, old reliable and all that, though there was a desperation behind it that Kendall could feel, could taste in the blood that dripped from his nose. He felt like a dog that tore its lead, no owner to be found; he imagined that Shiv and Roman and Connor felt similarly.

He hated him the last year and now he was gone, no true final words, only unheard ones spoken through a phone to a dying body, not Dad. Where was all this hate and resentment and bitterness supposed to go? Talk it out with a shrink? Sure, like that worked the twenty times before.