Waited for bread. Then the day ended. There wasn’t any bread. Or maybe he was thinking of the day before. I am a
father, he thinks. I am a father, he thinks. He’s deluded. They’ve drugged him. Or they drug him every day. I am a
father. I am a father, therefore I exist.
The door opens. “Jim,”—the man who enters comes in—He can only eat soft foods. Hard walls, soft food—he
says just that. “Jim.” There’s a tacit agreement between the two gentleman. Let’s examine this moment in detail.
The food is given to Jim. He’s given a spoon to eat the soft food. The door closes. I could kill myself with the spoon,
Jim muses.
But I am a father, he thinks, countering his muse. I have two. Two kids. A drawerful of spoons to treat two kids.
He needs water. There’s a cup of it. It is not my own piss this time, he thinks to himself.
He shakes his head. He almost wants to laugh. Two kids. Two cars. Twenty-four spoons.
His wife looks at him. Life is eating away at them and all she wants him to do is wipe the spoons. The kids are
finished. They went to separate rooms. So he wipes the spoons.
There’s just one spoon. Soft walls and hard furniture.
How did these moments steal from one spot to another?
The meal is finished. He wonders. The full sound.
Wonders
Wonders.
The world is full of wonders. Here I am. An arm reaches behind his back, scratching at the skin, where the bone
sticks from beneath, from his bent neck.
I am a father. The man returns just as the final amount of water had been emptied into himself. I am a father.
The tacit understanding. “Thanks,” the man says, taking the tray and the cup. That’s the only time he really thinks
about it. I am a father. I was a father.
I am not a father. I am a prisoner, he thinks, leaning back against uncomfortably back against his bolted bed,
head hit against the hard wall.
