A portrait of your father:
You pry the steel box open with a crowbar, and there’s your dad, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. There’s no Columbia coat, no scratched black frames or camera or worn paperback books, but he doesn’t need all that to be your dad. James looks at him through his wire-framed glasses that are a little too big for his nose and Draven looks back up at him, and James says, “Ready?” and you toss him out to the open sea so the Foundation can never have him, never really. Maybe they never had him at all.
A portrait of you:
You and James are in James’ battered Saturn as the sun rises. You’re wearing a green Columbia jacket that’s worn and torn in places — it was your father’s, but now it’s yours. James is in the passenger’s seat and you’re driving, windows down, James laughing and telling you to stop it you giant dork because you find a roundabout and go in circles around it several times in the early Sunday morning light and put the pedal to the metal when an old woman comes out on her front porch to yell at you for it. You’ve been terrified and will be again, but right now James is losing his shit because there was a turtle on the side of the road and you slam the car in reverse to look at it. You’ve been sad and you will be again, but right now James is saying that you should go to McDonalds before hitting the highway and you say hell yeah, we’re going to McDonalds, because right now the Foundation doesn’t matter and nothing can hold you back. When the dawn grey dissipates, you head onto the highway.
You’re painting a portrait of something old and something new, and everything inbetween.
Just like your father.
