Not My Father, Only in His Shoes
he bobs his head
to the curving of the road,
watching ravenous tires
eat into melting miles of asphalt.
This is existing
as he knows it:
deep aching in his hips,
pants that don’t fit quite right,
the hurried conversations of
weather, of sleep,
deep dissatisfaction at its rawest —
rests his head as
the sun raises hers
with a grunt, resurrecting
his waiting joints
just as others sigh and
sink into cotton comfort.
When will he not crave the open road,
yawning with his clouded eyes,
reflecting back at him —
the way silence sounds different when it
echoes off of woods,
hollow mahogany rattling.
The man of selflessness,
bowing to the selfish stranger as
habit becomes ritual becomes
sacrilegious rites —
his wholy unholiness.
one day he’ll look in the mirror
and see his father’s flabbery jowls,
deep-set, moon-like eyes;
a caving forehead slanting with time’s
elocution — insanity is doing
the same thing again and expecting
something different.
he imagines the cruel asphalt
eating away the gritty folds of his mind —
the mind that grays with his hair,
grays like his soul bathed in moonlight.
The dark conceals,
his reflection rarely passes
the onlooking eye —
titling himself inward, further and further
as the helices unwind like
Fate’s strings, who weave
in no unfamiliar pattern —
shake their heads at his frayed ends.
eyes, eyes that are no longer his —
fingers, calloused, tap at the texture
of the steering wheel,
a laughable control for the beast
he rides down this endless road.
he never glances into the rearview —
what need?
these eyes drive alone,
a phantom shadow
of time circling
without pause
and regret like skid marks
abandoned at every
careening turn.
Grace Beilstein is a sophomore at The Kinkaid School in Houston, Texas. She writes flash fiction, poetry, and prose. She is one of three main editors of her school's award-winning literary magazine "Falcon Wings."
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