Into This River I Drown

by T.J. Klune

Fifteen words. Fifteen words is all there is to describe the man who was my father. Fifteen words are all that is left of him. Fifteen words that do nothing.

This is at once a beginning and an end. This is the story of my love for two men. One is my father. The other is a man who fell from the sky.

Time is a river, I’ve learned. Always moving forward. But for people like me, people who have loved and lost, the river is something we fight. We swim against the current, trying to get back to the way we once were, trying to hold onto anything to keep us from getting swept away.

“Sometimes he was Joe Workman. Other times she was Quartina Backhand, the most dangerous woman in captivity.”

I kept you safe, just like I said I would.”

“Being down here isn’t the same as being up there looking down.”

“Promises aren’t always kept, even if they’re meant to be.”

“There is a point to grief,” she whispers fiercely. “But there is also a point to opening your eyes and living.”

The second thought: the way my hand felt in his. Engulfed. Sheltered.

For someone who spent a lot of time actively denying what he hoped to be true, the disappointment I feel is a surprisingly palpable thing.

I would rather have watched you from far away for the rest of your life than see you cross the river.”

The sun continues to rise on a new day so very different from the ones that have come before.

I knew I was drowning, but I was okay with that.

“Life is for the living. It’s time for you to live.”

All I wanted to do was find a dark corner and curl up until I was as small as I could make myself and just stay there until the world passed me by.

“You have to have this for your reports. I have to have this for my sanity. Open the door.”