I am four and as my pigtails bounce in the frigid fall air my dad teaches me how to fly a kite. I watch, mesmerized, at the sight of red, blue, yellow, and green dancing together in the air. My dad is a puppeteer of magic. I can admire the world from his shoulders. My dad is my hero.

I am six and my dad is gone. He talks to me and my mom on video calls in a beige T-Shirt, he smiles while my mom cries. On Christmas Day all I really want to open is the computer screen to pull him out. I’m not old enough to understand that all I’ll get is pixels, little pieces of a mirror image that can’t compare to the real thing. I am six and as I ride in the backseat of my mother’s red explorer we listen to the radio and when “two soldiers die in Baghdad.” I think it’s my dad. Everything turns black. My life is falling apart.

I am eight and my mom tells my dad to go fly a kite, I ask if I can come too. She says he’s not the same since he came back. I wish I could remember; I wish I could choose. All I know is that while my hero is here, my life is not, and next year my mother is leaving. My dad is the reason.

I am thirteen and I wish. I wish. I wish. I am so jealous of the people around me I am green. I wish to mirror the bodies of AD Campaigns.  I hate my ******* teeth. I wish for a prince charming, to sweep me off my feet. I don’t have a home. So I build one in hate and I try to escape. I wish my dad could communicate. I try to run away. I have an innate ability to disappreciate. I am dysfunctionally full of distaste for every flavor of who I am. And I don’t know it, but my dad is broken. Because his life has escaped him like a magic trick, my table cloth of a mother has been pulled out from under the dishes on the dining room table, and maybe the glasses are still there but every little spill stains. All I know is that he makes me clean my room, and we argue. My dad is a tyrant.

I am sixteen and I am torn. Every time I shut the door to the houses behind me I wish I didn’t have to. The guilt of escaping is suffocating and I am no longer filled with a jumpy buzz at the thought of leaving. Because I feel like I’ve already gone, and I’ve never had a place where I belong.  And the idea of being an adult sends shivers up my spine, brings darts to my eyes, and staggering breaths into my throat like a scratched CD. I’m not ready. My dad holds my head to his shoulder, laughing at me. And now that I’m older, I see. My dad is my home. My parents build the barebones of my skeletal body, and even though the responsibility of paying the water bill makes me anxious, I’m glad I get the paint the walls

-mrm 10/5/15