he asks what your parents were like
   He asks you how you are and you canât help but reel at the thought; you are anything but fine, yet a fire rests within you that never lets you rest and some unearthly dare keeps you focused on its flames. You are anything but fine and yet you despise that truth because you despise that which you do not know; things above and beyond yourself, things out of your control, things you could have chosen to take back and yet you did not.
   He asks about your parents and you feel like laughing, but you donât. You know that heâs been through worse. Youâve seen his father and his serpent tongue, his hands of destruction and his unholiness. You are a vigilante and you destroyed all that which his father is, and stood for, and believed in. Though that in itself is prideful, you are not.Â
   You pause and look above you, beyond the things your eyes may register, beyond all color and physical reasoning. You are focused on that past that you swore you could cleanly leave behind, you liar, you child.
   You pause, and you cannot stop yourself from pausing longer, letting the question linger until it becomes stale. But it has always been stale, âWhat were your parents like?â as if you knew any better than they did. As if you didnât look back and wish there was a way you could have paid more attention. But you could not then, and could not now, and wonder if you ever would have if you had the chance when you were growing up.
   It was not your fault, though it feels as if it were. And the innocent question burns, though it was not meant to.
   You grew up too fast, and you know that. You were doing your own laundry before you could understand basic mathematics, making your own school lunches before you had taken mid-level English. You were the last of the latchkey kids, envious of those who got calls from their mothers after school, worried about their whereabouts and whoabouts. Your friends always said you should be thankful that there wasnât anybody to breathe down your neck, and yet you still spent nights staying up past your bedtime, your phone at the foot of your bed as if it were a poisonous animal.
   It never lit up, and you were never bitten.Â
   And on Motherâs Day, you always took your time with your gifts. She never came home early, not even on that day, but you placed it strategically on the counter so she would see it when she could, and itâd be gone in the morning. You knew she had gotten it, though sheâd never mention it in passing; somehow you were fine with that, fine with the silence.
   He asks you about your parents and Motherâs Day is the first thing you think of, but not the last.
   When summer would come, humid and hot, they spent even less time at home. As if that were possible. But you did too, so you found yourself unable to blame them. (At least the storms are gone,) you told yourself, as if that were any consolation. But it was not, so you turned to the local arcade and spent the money they so graciously left on the sill of the window left unopened.
   The rooms were always stuffy, and you were always the one to take care of it. You remember the buzz of insects as wind hit your face first thing in the morning. You remember the lazy sway of grass in your yard and the yards youâd bike past, alone, and silent.
   You remember the gifts youâd leave in late June that wouldnât be moved until early August. As you got older they kept disappearing later and later, until your final year in the countryside. It was late September and that spot on the counter was the first place your eyes wandered as you skipped down the stairs. You couldnât be disappointed; for someone who barely showed up, he kept food in the fridge, and though you barely ate anymore you found a way to appreciate the effort.
   He asks about your parents and some part of your soul is angry, but the bigger part of you is only ever sad when you hear the words âMomâ and âDad,â because to you they did not exist in person, only in thought and passing and yearly dinners with family that never spoke to you much at all.
   But you knew that they only ever did their best to house you, clothe you, and keep you fed. You always had enough money for the arcade, and for vending machine snacks, and days out with your âfriends.â The friends that made you feel as if life wasnât so solitary, but it was. It was solitary and it was silent.
   You think back to your phone at the foot of your bed, and how nowadays you keep it closer to your chest. You think back to the nights you stayed awake waiting for the vibrations, and the nights you were awoken by them. The friends you could call your friends. The friends who were never âMomâ and âDad,â who cared for you and would have taken the bullets that you would have taken for them.
   But heâs waiting for your answer and your thoughts have gone by in such slow seconds that you thought they could have been years. You think he would have given up, and yet heâs still waiting patiently, looking at you expectantly. His father is a snake and his mother gave up her life; you feel as if your story of neglect and solitude is nothing in comparison.
   âThey were good people.â
   Perhaps your answer is not so convincing. There is a bad taste on your tongue and deep in your heart, you are unsettled by the question. âWhat were your parents like?â like a reverberation in your hollow body, you are even and composed even if you feel the barren expanse of loneliness. You think back, you think hard, and yet you cannot remember. Their faces and voices are nothing but distant memories.
   You do not know what they were like.
   You wish you did, but you do not.
