I leave quickly and my father doesn’t follow. I don’t make a scene. I roll my eyes at him and grab my mickey from the floor. I take a long swig and throw it in the shiny silver garbage. I flatten my dress against my thighs and leave. I press my fingertips against a tattoo that sits happily on my forearm.
Desiderium is written in black Franklin Gothic font. It is the alphabet my father stared at every day for forty years during his career as a newspaperman, the typeface that accepted him, the one set of symbols on earth that loved him as he was.
I walk down the stairs and on my descent I slip back and forth in my high heels. I am drunker than I thought, than I expected to be. I take off my shoes and hold them in my left hand, the banister in my right. From this elevated perspective, I see my mother. I drop my shoes, they crash on the wooden stairs and I yell out to her.
“Mom! Mom! I was looking for you.”
She turns. She doesn’t notice that I am shoeless and braless.
Desiderium; “A yearning desire for something that you once had and now lost.”
