I.
Saturdays taste like burnt toast and watery orange juice - you sat for two minutes and forty nine seconds too long to rest your head in your hands after you had sloppily slid the piece of toast into the toaster. You didn't hear the ding that went off, instead focusing on the violent pounding inside your head. You only came to your senses when you could smell the crispiness of the bread, and the smoke from the metal machine greeted the air through gentle rolls. You blinked blearily and sat at down at the table, toast in hand and glass unbalance atop a coaster. You caught your reflection briefly in the dip of a spoon that had been left out from the night before; your eyes empty and your face sullen. You saw a bit of your mother in yourself, so you retreated to your bedroom and avoided your reflection for the rest of the day.
II.
Your father had always been a good man. You remember the way he'd brush your hair out of your eyes with his fingers that were too big for everything. His laughter was loud and comforting enough to fill every silence that seemed too broke beyond repair. You listen to the blaring horns and scuffle of feet from the outside of your window. Your head is under your duvet and your breathing is muffled ffrom the thick fabric, but the jumble of sounds is comforting like your father's laughter. The only comparison being that he was distant; somewhere high and away in the clouds, and beyond reach.
III.
When people ask you about home, you think about the rotten smell of ripe fruit and the faint scent of cigarette smoke on fabric. They say that it's all right, that the sense of smell is a leading factor to recollecting memories. But you remember that so is the sense of taste, and you remember the bitter taste of the bile that would collect in your mouth like the foaming of salt water when waves would wash up and kiss the shore. You'd remember feeling empty and out of place when your father would leave for business trips, being it your mother and a big, empty house. You'd use your sense of sight and recall her bent and unproportional shadows behind doors when she'd check up on you in silence. You crush your lit cigarette into a bowl atop your bedside table and scuffle out of bed; you reach for the bathroom door handle and see your shadow, and decide to go back to bed.
IV.
I am a human, as my mother and father were; I am a part of them even when I don't want to be. I am infinite and broken beyond repair, and lonely and hopeless, all because I am human. I smile only at night because I know not anything else of how to survive.
