I never woke to the sound of it scurrying across her ceiling, but to her fist pounding the wall where a headboard might be. The fist was saying, I’m embarrassed. But the possum was undeterred; it ran laps, it invited over friends. They scuttled across the attic: flirting, playing tag.
My obsession with my father is so pronounced that when I sit down to write about the women I’ve loved, I begin with a line about him. My memory of others is never lit up and illuminated like my memoryof him. This is an old thought, the way a dream is an old thought, born in the mind and prone to illusions. Although his skeleton is underground, our relationship is ongoing.