How It Feels to Float

by Helena Fox

Over the years, Mum has suggested we go see people because Dad is dead, but then we put it off.

I am dead in infinite alternate universes. I am mostly and most likely dead. I am dead, now, here. All doors opening, all doors closed.

I didn’t ask for Dad to die, but I am why he was sad. I didn’t ask to see him in that room eyeswidewidewide. I didn’t ask to be born.

One moment, a mountain. The next, the land slipping out. A mess of falling trees and scars.

I wait in bed. For time to pass. For life to stop being bad/worse/worst. For the thoughts to stop sauntering in.

all day you hold one dream close because in it everything was back to how it once was.

Where do I start? Because it’s the wrong question, I think. I don’t feel. There is no feeling here.

So your father passed away? : He’s dead? Oh, he’s only mostly dead? Not really dead? What’s that, he sits with you on the end of the bed at night and sometimes in the day? Is he here right now?

Why is it so hard for you to be happy?

I say, “I would like my dad to come back.” This feels like an uncomplicated answer: Once upon a time, I had a dad and now I do not, and wouldn’t it be nice if he returned?

Bump loves dead things more than he loves anything. Don’t I understand love?

I’m in this echo of a house with only a sleeping dog and creaking walls for company, and once I had Dad alive and then I had Dad dead, and once I had friends and school and I was busy, and now life is beating on without me, everyone bouncing and dancing and talking and kissing and drinking, and all I am is alone.

You might have to burn some days, dodge other days. It’s a constant adjustment, isn’t it, to survive? But it’s critical to know how to do it,

It’s a miracle they caught you, you were so slippery.”

Puppy

I’m surprised to find—feeling. What am I supposed to do with it all?

I want now and I want then.

I want what was. I want life before Dad left, before Grace left. Life before Grace’s fire went out, before I put it out. Life before the waves. Life before Dad died. Life before I was born.

It’s okay and it’s not, you know? Like, I’m alive. And I’ve read tons of books now, so I’m probably incredibly intelligent.

I’m alone; I’m not alone; my feet walk over the ghosts of Dad’s footprints. I am a ghost of the future walking over the ghosts of the past. I step on each crack and the cracks open wide, wider—

“Grace. Guess what: I think I’ve found a way to get my dad back.”

“What? What exactly am I ‘supposed’ to do, Mum? Not fall apart? Not want to die? Too late. Dad made sure of that. And you too, for not getting help for him when he was fucking screaming for it—”

just some babysitting here, dog-walking there, some baby-walking and dog-sitting here and there.

When in doubt, ignore the problem. It’s worked for centuries. This is how we humans have ended up in such a shit puddle.

My dead dad has been visiting me for eight years, but now he has disappeared, and when he disappeared I had a mental breakdown,

What doesn’t kill you . . . makes you not dead yet.

I stand under the water and want to cry but of course there’s nothing inside me to let out.

It sounds like times have been tough and your mind has had to get creative to cope.

I want to walk off this paper. I want to walk out of this story.

“I am so sorry I couldn’t do it for longer, sweetheart. I am so sorry I didn’t stay. I wish I could explain it—if there was a way—but maybe there isn’t a way or a why.

“While you were gone, I realized you were too crazy to deal with, so from now on I will only be friends with people who don’t talk to their dead dads?”

This moment will pass. Another one will come. Hard will come—grief and dark and worry and loss. Again. Again. Sooner. Later.