Sticky Fingers

My father never said sorry.

Not once.

Instead, he brought home fruits,

as if sweetness could graft itself

onto the rot it was meant to cover.

Mangoes —

when I’d been silent long enough

to be mistaken for obedient —

their gold flesh softening in the bowl,

breathing a faint perfume of decay,

a bribe that bruised at the slightest touch,

leaving your fingers sticky with guilt.

Once,

after snapping my Walkman in half

because I’d turned the volume too high,

he came home with a new schoolbag.

Said, “It has more compartments.”

As if grief only needed

better shelving,

more hidden pockets

to keep the broken things in —

a meticulous autopsy room for the living.

He once threw away my poems.

No hesitation.

No pause to see

if they bled when crumpled.

Said, “These won’t feed you.”

He was right.

But neither did his silence.

Silence has no calories —

only weight.

The kind that settles on your chest

until breathing feels like theft.

The first time he hugged me

was at his retirement ceremony.

I was twenty-one,

dressed like I had somewhere else to be.

His arms were awkward,

as if they’d forgotten

they were allowed to close around me.

He whispered, “Proud.”

I asked, “Of what?”

He didn’t answer.

Maybe he didn’t know.

Maybe he’d rehearsed the word so long

it slipped out without a script —

a lone actor stepping onto a stage

long after the play ended.

And maybe

that was the apology —

a fruit basket,

a better bag,

a word left to rot in the throat.

Sweet, overripe,

fermenting into something

you could swallow

if you were desperate enough.

And I was.

I drank it.

It burned going down —

like swallowing the ghost of a blade

he never had the courage

to press to his own heart.