✍ - a memory of their mother ☽ - a memory of their father
He swears he swears it’s them. It must be. They looked like that. Tall and tan and some scar along his chin, and short and thin and freckled with short black hair. Cor stands between them, giants in their own right, grabbing a backpack, and shoving supplies inside it. Black and white journals, watercolor paints, crayons, all sorts of other things.
It was him, wasn’t it? Tall and tan with brown hair and a scar on his chin. That was his father, wasn’t it? He hugged him, didn’t he? She was there, squeezing his shoulder and trying to stop him from crying when she left, wasn’t she?
They were there. Weren’t they?
He must’ve done something wrong that day. Must’ve upset them. Must’ve picked the wrong backpack. Did poorly in class. Wouldn’t go the nap when they told him to. There must’ve been something wrong. Because he knows their presence still remained.
Someone was opening the door to the house. Someone was buying food. Someone opened the mail, and would open the fridge at night, and sit in the dark, watching TV, sleeping on the couch. Someone was there, but he cannot remember if it was them. Those two. Only one person. They linger like a ghost, one more than the other. It’s like they vanish. He must’ve done something wrong. He can spend his whole life correcting it, but they don’t come back. They are done with him.
And when he’s tall enough to reach the top shelf of the cupboard, and open the freezer on his own, when he doesn’t need to call the number on the sticky note and ask how to use the microwave, he realizes that he doesn’t really need them anyway.