minivans

the last time I saw you you had cut the patches off your denim jacket. I was not unaware that the future had already happened because five years ago i was living in the past. still, it caught me off guard. you gave me a lump sum of your life that began and ended with your children's achievements and I nodded earnestly when you expected a laugh. Your life seemed be drawn out and graphed the way math equations can go on for years and years but there's always the same right answer. you pat me on the shoulder with a look of complacent sorrow that i remembered from college, handed me a card and said "call me tomorrow I'll find you a job". I kept the card on my bedside for the rest of my life, crossing out the number in bold black pen and noting each time i would try to see past the ink. these were the moments where i tried to see you and your rusted vision of noncompliance smoking outside on the balcony telling me "the world will never take me the way it took my father" and each time i thought of it your face kept losing shape like it was being rubbed raw by children's fingers. Somewhere there is a version of you that i could recognize and i wish for its place within you. your soul is the shape of a wild animal but you're aged enough to understand that your lungs are its prison, that breathing again and again is a choice you decide at thirteen years old when kid things don't matter but adults things don't either. I don't idolize your time. I don't want your job. I wouldn't want your life except in the form of a blanket I've had since I was a baby, calming and warm and long-lasting and strife. Your rules have become currency, passed around each area of your life until no one expects you to do anything more. You lost yourself in the future, but i keep perusing the past because maybe someday you stayed the same.