...five, a first.
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Son stands at the threshold of a door,
knuckling away the sleepy in his eye, ducking around the corner just then, peeking into the room carpet bombed by the sky-high hands of father. Son stumbles through the kitchen, living room—just a sprog in the training course of punched-in walls and knocked around furniture —confused about the foreign lighting from a fallen lamp, the sharpness of wrong shadows on the lopsided painting of mother. Son zigzags past the minefield of half-smoked butts, ash mounds, climbs the trench of the fallen couch to avoid spills he thinks will burn his feet, past the Power Rangers action figures still admirably fighting Lord Zedd in the center of battle, untouched. Son screams in seeing the opening sequence of The X-Files on the floored television, cannot find the remote in the debris; just a pack of Kool 100’s, an old leather-worn wallet, and a bronze-filled mug Dad always sips from, bubbling like the bath. I taste alcohol at 5, a first, find Dad in the driveway facedown again. When we go back inside I chuck the Lord Zedd toy at him, hard. I didn’t yet have the mind to conceive the metaphor for a grenade. |