The Black Book

I'd searched through the jungles of Thailand and

scuba-dived along the Mariana Trench all for this beautiful,

little black book.

Standing above your dead grave, I recited the

incantation line by line, word by word until the sky

moaned, darkened and the ground shook. And the rain started: pathetic fallacy

is the best foreshadower.

Your dry, dead hand broke through the crust

of that heavy earth, followed by your arm and your face finally

appeared; not as I remembered it but still beautiful and

enough to make me cry, to fall to my weak knees. You

stood before me, naked and dirty. You just stood.

I brought you home, held your paternal flesh

as we walked through the prairies of our old house.

You were silent.

Introducing you to my new family, new

friends was a risk

I gladly took. They thought me mad, insane; I

thought as much.

It took me years of holidaying with you, Christmases, relived

old memories to realise that you had not

said a word since that rainy day. For the first time,

I stood before you and looked into your eyes. They were

cold, dead, absent, hollow, lifeless, echoing a life already spent;

didn't recognise me at all.

I woke you from the dead, snatched you

from paradise and robed you of

your final resting place. So I drove you to your empty grave and

struck your head with a rock, folded you into

the ground. Deja vu.

Father, only then did I remember that I buried you years ago.