I Must Go on Standing

"Dear Austin,


I miss my father.

My heart aches to be held in his arms again, his always tired arms. I miss sitting on the porch with him while he smoked, watching the sun go down together. I crave to inhale his old, familiar scent of leather and nicotine. I can still remember how his cheeks felt when I touched them, rough and creased. I long to kiss his cheeks again and tell him how much I want him back, how much I love him.

He worked at a coat factory. He sewed the buttons onto the coats. There had been racks upon racks of leather coats and I would hid in them for hours, just breathing in the smell of fresh leather.

One night, a few weeks before he left, he had came home with bleeding fingers. He said the needles had made him bleed again and I had washed them clean. That night my mother and father had fought. I had hid in the bath tub and covered my eyes, hot tears dampening my palms. My mother had still been yelling when he had burst through the bathroom door and slammed it shut behind him. I remember watching him swing open a cabinet and pull out a pair of silver scissors.

He cut all his long, curly hair off. I begged him not to, pleaded with him to leave it, but he didn't listen. I cried as I watched all his dark hair fall into the bathroom sink. After he was gone, I had collected all the hair from the sink and placed it in a mason jar.

He had always been the one to cut my hair, and when he did, we would take all of my cut hair and place it in the trees and bushes so the birds could use it for their nests.

The day my father left, I placed the pieces of his long hair in the trees. I watched as the birds and the wind took it. And I knew, where ever my father was...

He was free.




~ Lucy"