Loving Stars

fourth chapter: and you will be

When my father died I didn't cry.

Because he was an asshole.

There was no tear running down my face. I didn't feel the heaviness of guilt on my heart. I don't remember feeling anything at all when I threw a rose on his casket. I don't even remember my mother crying or the wind howling. I just remember how relieved I was when I saw the petals falling from the flower.

He scared my friends. He made me push them away. Until I was all alone like the sun on the blue, bright sky. He told me to kill myself. To die. Like I wasn't his daughter who he loved. He held a knife in front of my face, screaming, his spit landing on my face.

It didn't matter it was only a knife on bread, or that it happened only once and that I deserved it.

I still hated him. Perhaps it was easier to hate him than to love him.

When he died, I didn't remember the teasing and the jokes he liked to do, sometimes. I didn't remember all those times he put more potatoes on my dish. I didn't remember all those times I craved to impress him.

I remembered how he hurt me. His cruelty and his red face while he hit me.

I remembered how sometimes when I was alone, I couldn't breath because of him. How I hurt myself when I was crying on my bed. How a face of my friend appeared every time I looked at a knife, because I couldn't hurt her like that.

I remembered how I hated that I was his daughter. How I hated myself.

After my father died I was free.

Or so I thought.

But you do remember that. You do remember her. Don't you, Nick?