on holes and fathers

a more experimental piece on trying to put words to a relationship

family portrait - rembrandt, edited

How do you write a hole? There are only so many ways to say “nothing”, only one way to store an emptiness. 

So you write around the hole instead. You write around the edges, describe the shape by what’s there instead of what isn’t. But the hole looks larger and larger the more you write around it and some of the things start falling in and when did you start having to write upwards from the bottom of the hole than looking down it? 

You make a deal with God, the deal is this: you give eighteen years of your life to climb out of this hole (because let’s be honest, it’s not like you wanted eighteen more years anyway). Once you’re out of the hole, you don’t look at it. Or maybe you can’t look at it. Doesn’t matter; if you don’t see it, it’s not there anymore and if you walk far enough away from the hole, maybe you can write about something other than the hole. 

The more you write, the more you find your words circling something. You are still avoiding looking at the empty spaces between your words, you are still avoiding looking people in the eye. You’re not in the hole anymore, but why does the feeling still follow? Why can you no longer see the hole in the corner? 

One day you look down and you realize the hole is not where you left it because it is now in your chest. 

Well, shit. You spent eighteen years of your life and you still got to keep the hole. 

You take your friends to look at the hole. You point at the hole. You say words around the hole so they can see the shape. You’re eighteen years older and you still can’t talk your way over a hole, only around.

What hole? They ask you. I don’t see anything. 

That’s the point, you try to say. There isn’t anything. But there’s only so many ways to say “nothing” and only one way to store an emptiness and bigger emptiness-es end up being the same size as the smaller ones. Not really, though.

But it doesn’t matter if you’re the only one talking circles around a hole that may or may not even exist anymore so you let it slide the way you let everything slide and the less you look at it, the less you have to talk around it. There’s no use to wasting words on a corner when there’s the rest of the room still blank.

One day, the hole stops looking like a hole so you ask it a question. 

You ask it: can you look at this pain in the eye and take it home? Can you look this pain in the eye and name it?

He looks at you and says, “I took you home and named you, didn’t I?”

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