41

It starts as a temporary thing, way too bizarre to even imagine it as someone’s life. It peels away slowly, softly maybe not to awaken you. You remain asleep as one thing falls off at a time, until you realise, a little too late, that you are naked. And alone. And very much living the life that at one point seemed a little too much to become your own life. At first it was the late night arguments, mother sleeping on the floor. And then they weren’t sleeping in the same room anymore. And then Father was no longer living with us, not really.

He only visited on weekends.

And even then, he would knock on the door, the same place he never bothered to knock. He would knock, wait nervously for someone to open and then he would come in, sit on the sofa that used to be his, talk to me like he was my uncle and then leave. I came to look forward to these visits. And then they stopped happening altogether.