A Story in Eight Non-Sonnets

I: The Wash Up I swear, you're just like your father sounds like a beautiful thing to say, if my father hadn't killed himself when I was nineteen, I’d think the same, he walked into the sea, like Virginia Woolf, months after Jeff Buckley, it was all over the news, not my dead dad, but the musician who drowned in a runlet connected to the Mississippi while singing Whole Lotta Love, there were no rivers in town, so Dad opted for the beach, the same one where he took my sister Andy and me dinosaur hunting when we were kids, flipping over stones the same way we did with the kitchen tiles where we hid the money for groceries and the bills, worried that when Dad lost it he would start spending, spending too much time at the bar and inside his own head, where he often forgot how to stay afloat, how to act human, they found his body starfished on the shore, with an outrageous amount of whiskey in his system and a pocketful of lithium, oh, how he hated to take his meds, They drown out the world, he’d say, I'm much better off —without them. II: Severance, Or My Father’s Body As A Blade You'll learn to ride it out, my mother claimed, talking about Dad's condition, It's like a rollercoaster, I remember how, for a couple weeks, he graced us with his singing, we'd find him in the living room, dancing, sometimes with Mom, other times alone with no clothes on, then one day we arrived home, found him in the tub with an Exacto knife and a long cut from his elbow, down to his pulse, a red serpentine slithering towards the drain, Oh my—Call for help, Mom howled, No, Get your sister out of here, I didn't know what to do first, grab Andy’s hand or call 911, it took me about two minutes to thaw into some sort of action while my mother shook Dad's shoulders and tried to stop the bleeding with a bath towel, when the EMTs arrived—all crisp-collared and holding their medical kits—they told us to wait outside, as if we hadn't already witnessed the worst of it, He was pretty lucky that you got here when you did, one of the first responders said that made it seem like he was transporting sweets, Have a nice day, call us if you need anything, Dad recovered, and Mom left that same year, saying, I can't deal with this. III: Like Montauk Went to the beach today, not the one where Dad had drowned himself, because that would have been awfully macabre, counted—unlucky—thirteen stripes around the lighthouse and thought about how I had never seen the high tides, well, only in the movies, when someone would wade into the raging waters to kill themselves, but I didn't want to think about that, so I decided to walk along the coast instead, the sand was riddled with seaweed and transparent bags that reminded me of deep-sea jellyfish, I've never liked the sensation of saltwater licking the slough off my toes, but have always enjoyed the stench of ocean spray, saw a turtle shell empty on the sand, limbless with no body in sight, thought of how the fleshed-out carcass looked like an ornate fruit plate and remembered how Dad was obsessed with eating watermelon and black cherries, spitting their cleaned pits, like bullets, into the garden, hoping one of the seeds would take, I was then lured into reverie by a childhood song, and couldn't help but sing it—unbashfully—while watching the sun sow into the horizon, Down by the baaaay, where the watermelons groooow, back to my hoooome, I shall not go. IV: Analogies I've always known that I could inherit from Dad a lot more than his burnt caramel eyes, dimples, and wonky earlobes, maybe that's what I fear most, the self-destructive behavior, the inability to notice how I hurt myself or anyone else in my vicinity, maybe, that's honestly why Dad started drinking, maybe—or not—that's why I did too, taking a gulp of booze from his stash every morning before school, he never noticed, at least I don't think he did, or maybe he did, maybe, he smelt the woody, single malt in my breath, caught sight of the incremental centimeters missing in his bottles, but never asked because maybe he understood, sensed the similarity between us, how father and son shared dark, diseased roots, like that time when I was fifteen and started waking, around the witching hour, to make collages of Freddy Mercury and Jesus, scribbling skull heads and a forest of wildfires on my bedroom walls with neon highlighters and intoxicating Sharpies, when Andy walked into my frenzy, —saw more art than a DC comic—she asked, Hell, what the fuck is wrong with you? V: Lithium 101 I had a chemistry teacher, Mr. Baites was his name, in my first year of high school who had a terrible habit of placing his hands on other people's knees and thighs while getting whisker-close to his students, he taught us all about the periodic table, and fun facts that were, for the most part, utterly useless, like how Au, the symbol for gold, is derived from the Latin word aurum, which means glowing like a halo, or a sunset, or a mystical light—an aura—back then I didn’t understand how words like potassium or calcium, commonly found in the stocks and shelves of supermarket aisles, were actually chemical elements, Chemistry is indeed a funny thing, Mr. Baites said, You can notice it just about anywhere, between two bodies or in a simple drop of water or kerosene, I learned how lithium was extremely flammable—potentially toxic—and highly unstable, much like Dad at that time, who in that same week bought a shit-ton of margarine, eggs, and flour, all because he wanted to make Andy and me special pancakes for dinner, Mr. Baites explained the differences between the alkali metal and medication, last time I heard, he was arrested, lost his teaching license after pulling a Humbert Humbert. VI: Resemblances On an almost daily basis I wonder how other people see me: don't walk too fast, am I humming too loudly, look alive, keep eye contact, don't laugh, trying to act normal so people won't notice my chemistry, that, in itself, just proves how paranoid I really am, Dad swore sobriety on the same year that I started taking lithium, I’m serious, my boy, It'll be good for us both, he said while pouring an entire liter of Jack Daniel's down our kitchen sink, I smiled, really thought he was turning over a new leaf, that he, after so many years of innate spiraling, could settle down like castor sugar and remain pure and sweet, but Dad didn't take to living life without the alcohol-induced buzz, couldn't live without his favorite honeyed liquid, the constant stirring, the world rotating at the heels of his feet, Like really? I don't get why people take this shit, Dad said, as he dumped a whole month's worth of pills—both mine and his—into the trash, It's not a cure, it’s just another way of dulling the noise, that same day, he went out on a booze run, got a new stock of bottles, while I fished for capsules, thinking, I don't ever want to be like him. VII: SOS A lot of people don't know about lithium's side effects, its toxicity: how until you get the dosage just right, you go through a period of adaptation, feeling sometimes nauseous and at other times hazy, how you see the world in muted tones as if your vision was covered with a layer of cellophane, the price you pay for protection, to keep yourself and others sane, because who wants to see a demon at the foot of their bed at night, or sleeping on the living room floor like a dog, the last time I cleaned up after Dad, he had hurled a warped version of the Milky Way all over the carpet, it only seems like yesterday I was towering over his puddle of vomit, scrubbing away the aftermath after dragging his body to bed, I don't know what I would do without you, my boy, he said the next morning, all smiles and clean-cut, as if the memories of the previous night had simply faded, but my hands were cracked and sore, my head racing, What in the actual fuck is wrong with you? my words boomed like missiles, Do you honestly think that this . . . this is okay, that you can just go on like this forever? Because, I'll tell you right now, —Dad, I sure as hell can't. VIII: The Things We Remember I swear, you look just like your father comes off as a compliment, if your dad's a hero, not to the world, but just enough for the people he loved, which doesn't equate to a lot, nothing audacious, noteworthy or generous, mostly road trips, sandcastles, and trips to the Natural History Museum, where I cooed over the sheer length of a mammoth’s tusks and pondered if I could get away with stealing a fossil, Well, that’s definitely a way to go, Dad had said, pointing to the sculpted, golden facets of a sarcophagus beneath a cube of glass, that was the first time I had ever seen a dead body, Dad had been on a high for what seemed like months, both Andy and I had returned from school with nothing but praise on our report cards, This calls for a celebration, Dad announced in cheer, chock-full of pride and hypomania, I was only twelve, and he couldn’t stop calling me a genius for getting one of the top scores in English, on our way back home Dad turned on the car radio, started singing Led Zeppelin—Whole Lotta Love— Andy and I tried to sing along, but we didn't know the words, it didn’t matter though because Dad was happy to lower the volume and teach us.