My Father Taught Me

by Beatrix Maynard

My father taught me to breathe. To inhale everything up and hold it in. Let it settle deep in my belly up in the little crevice beneath my lungs. Cage it between my ribs. Hold it there for a little bit longer than I should as it claws at my skin. And eventually let it out and pay no attention to how shaky it is. And sit with the silence and the hunger of my lungs. To learn patience.

Taught me to repeat and try again and again and again. In and out, breathe in and out. Like the rhythm of the tides. I am pulled by his voice telling me to breathe. 

When my face runs hot and my heart beats unprompted, out of sync, his arms wrap around me and squeeze. Breathe, he whispers and the air leaves me. He lets go and I am filled up again. The smell of old spice and dog lingering on his shirt. 

So now I hold myself tight to overpower the shaking and clutch and unclutch myself. Counting. In two three four, out two three four. Until the hunger subsides.

My father taught me to take my mothers anger and clasp it in my hands. To let the flames burn my hands and leave little bubbling blisters along them. Hands don’t scar as easily as the heart does. Taught me to sit with the sting and the pain. The ache. He tells me that eventually I will have to learn to love it, or not. That I can no longer ignore the hunger and the burn. How it sits where my heart is, and that surely isn't a good thing to hurt. But he always made sure to tell me that he loved it. The fire and the spite, like he had loved it in my mother. 

He taught me it was always my choice, as everything always has been. That I’m not bound to this pain. That I can leave. That I can get up from the table and refuse to eat. Instead I go to my room and breathe. And sit with the guilt I feel for leaving. For preserving what little peace I have. Because once I get started I can’t stop. There is a beast in me hungry and burning and it is ravenous. It doesn't want to breathe. It wants to burn. Deep and roaring. And the tears run hot down my cheeks as I wrap myself in my bed. Hungry. I am so hungry. And my sheets don't smell like his cologne.

So I wrap my fingers around it as it screams and spits and sputters out. Lying in my bed, killing a part of me. Snuffing it out. The kettle is no longer boiling over. I am trying to learn not to fill it too high.

My father taught me to love my sister no matter how often she pisses me off. How often I think of my mother when she speaks to me. How often I can’t breathe around her. If I have no air to speak, I have none to argue. It's a bad mentality to have, but I'm not sure I have any more mentalities left. 

Her voice is like a trigger and I have the gun. It is in my hand and I'm holding it. Shaky and unsteady. Most days I have to remind myself we are related. That she burns with the same fire as our mother and breathes the same breath of my father. He has taught her lessons I will never need to learn. She is selfish and I am bitter and it's a horrid combination. And she is close enough to me to hurt.

So I keep my distance from her and bittersweetly hope she forgets I exist.

My father taught me that the world is unfair. That anger has and will never be wanted in a woman. That my body has cut me a bad hand. The hunger beats again as I say this. It clutches the sides of my throat climbing to my mouth, and I swallow down hot spit to drown it. The beast stays. 

He taught me that I can do something about it. But I have snuffed out my fire far too much to do any good with it. Arson has been burned out of my system. Revolt had been scratched out of my dictionary. I don't know a world where I do not suffer. So I breathe and think of my father.