when i think about you it’s all fresh air, cold beer, hot temper.

if i dig deep i can hear laughter from the cab of your ford pickup where you’d sprawl out sleeping bags and coloring books for long road trips and be the guy mom swears she married. sweet music, big laughter, little luxuries.

but what sits at the surface are the many times i asked you to stop drinking and the way you laughed, the way you were sure a 10 year old couldn’t have possibly understood all the abuse she saw. 

the way you laughed and pushed the door closed that time i walked in on you kneeling over the toilet with a carton of orange juice at the ready; an alcoholics remedy for withdrawal. 

since your passing i listen to noah kahan’s “orange juice” and cry because i never thought to ask you where you’d gone, why’d you go? just always why you never loved me enough to stay; proud of me, sober, alive. 

maybe i don’t give enough credit to all of the ways the world put rocks in your pockets and told you drowning was the only way to survive. 

but my first word was “dada” later followed by “no”, do with that what you will. i could’ve sworn i was resolved but decades have passed and so have you and what remains is this hole in my heart that only you could’ve filled. 

when you’re little they tell you to watch out for strangers and forget to mention it’s the familiar faces saying “don’t forget where you came from” that you’ll want to stay away from most. 

the ones saying “don’t forget your roots” as they rip you from the dirt to feast on what you’ve harvested. angry at a world that chewed them up and spit them out and taking a bite out of you is the only way they know how to cope.

you’d often tell me “no one will ever love you the way i do, i’ll be waiting right here for you when the bottom falls out.” beer in hand and my blood seeping from the corners of your mouth. 

-tbrumm