this is brain damage.

my father haunts me. in my actions, in my words, in my breath. I am his embalming fluid. I feel myself as him, his genetics. my mother must loathe me at times. I am everything she left him because of.

I don't remember him ever saying a word to me. I only remember the wheeze. the opalescent skin. wake up. hematite hair. hospital bed surrounded by smokey friends with wheel of fortune playing on the 20 inch television. wake up, dad, please. my brother being a dry eyed, emptied man. yellowed bass guitars. cat shit. dad, it's been a while, you gotta wake up. cold hands. my stepmothers pabst from a can poured into a speckled, lipstick stained tumbler. the odour of marlboro lights, disbelief, and biscuits. a pastel memory of going to the toy store with him in the back seat of his best friends car and him buying me barbie chapstick because anything barbie is as good as a barbie doll. his garlic spaghetti. the colostomy bag. louis, louis, wake up. half lit, foggy eyes. cold pleather couches. cousins I'll never see again. school is going to be impossible tomorrow. cigarette butts, ashtrays, ashes everywhere. the tape recording he made for my 3rd birthday of him reading fairy tales. I'll never hear him play his instruments. dad, you have to wake up, you fucking have to wake up to see me, please. hot tears, cold sweat, warm breeze through the rusty screen door. none of this is real. the dim, olive light throughout the living room. rattles of so many pill bottles. how do all of you people know and remember me 17 years later? everything is too real. photo albums with strange stories of me in them. vaguely recognisable faces that I recall from dreams. my fathers mothers jewelry. the brown and rotting shag carpet. books that my father thumbed. this is fucking surreal.

this is a recollection of a remembrance. this is a 4 second long memory I have of remembering memories at my fathers bed. I don't remember being there, I don't remember how long I was there or who of my fathers friend surrounded us or anything else other than remembering memories, and the environment I was swathed in.

I wish I could remember his voice.

they told me when he regained consciousness later, he said he had heard me, and that he loved me.

I don't believe them. I want to believe them. I can't believe them.

I emulate him in so many ways; I am near nothing like my mother. I love her more than any words could ever express and I hate that I am this. I hate that I will never be understood by her. I hate that my grandmother understands me more than she knows and that I will never love her the way I want to. I hate that I don't love my father.

my brothers wife played 'wish you were here' on an acoustic at my fathers funeral party. I sat in a white fold out chair, tears streaming and steaming. I was a spectacle to be observed, the long lost daughter to which no contact had been had in 17 years. so nice of her to come to her fathers cremation celebration. she has his smile, I can tell past those tears. that's a nice dress she's wearing. I wanted to vomit into the punch bowl. I heard 'wish you were here' minutes ago, and was reminded of the scene in 'clockwork orange' where alex feels nausea from hearing his previously favourite composer beethoven, because of his past traumatic experiences during which the artist was played. the mere melody wrenched his stomach.

I just puked in my garbage can.