Picture 2
Pablo Michaels' Picture Choice: 1
Title: The Peculiar Visitor
I salvaged this desk, chair, and icons of the past from my mother’s obsession to donate it all to the Salvation Army. I still keep them in my office. The photograph reminds me of the peculiar stranger who wrote poetry on the typewriter. He inspired me to start my writing career, even though I barely remember him. He died when I was young. Wanting to hide his memory, my mother and siblings insisted he died a disgrace, nothing but a drifter and an alcoholic.
Relishing in my only memory of him besides his photograph and book of poems, his image returns from that night when he arrived. As a five-year-old boy I imagined this peculiar visitor, returning from a journey around the world. When my mother ushered him through the front door, he hugged each of us kids while his hands clasped candy into our clutched fingers. His dark clothes smelled musty and his face was in need of a shave, but he intrigued my infatuation, more, as a mystery of who he was. Since I was a child, I was sent to bed, shortly afterward.
I woke when he came into my room in the middle of the night to sleep in the extra bed in my room. Unable to go back to sleep, I peered through squinted eyes him undressing and slipping under the covers in his underwear. I listened to his deep breathing frequently rising into a snore. He, occasionally, mumbled indecipherable words while he slept.
I must have fallen asleep. When I woke his bed was empty, the covers strewn to the side, and the sheet was stained. Having been a bed wetter, I found solace he was one too. I rushed to the kitchen, but only my sisters and mother were there. He was gone.
I asked where the visitor had gone.
My mother mumbled, her face expressing sadness, “He left early this morning,” my mother whispered.
I was terribly disappointed until I asked who he was. She took my hand. A tear trickled from one eye down her flushed cheek. “He’s your father.”
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Pablo Michaels writes LGBT fiction and has published with Naughty Nights Press, http://naughtynightspress.blogspot.com You can follow him at @bell2mike
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