Photo by Silvana Mool on Unsplash
by Kalliopy Paleos
The fat-cat Florida attorney with green suspenders and matching bow tie claims to have found no will, but during the one talk we’d ever had Daddy admitted cutting back on the gin, mumbled something about a trust, and said all he wanted now was quiet because he’d shouted long and hard enough. No trace of Daddy or me or anyone else hanging in his empty linen suits, nor the wool, or the silk, not in the calfskin billfolds or ebony shaving brushes, not in the duffel bag of scuba equipment or monogrammed attaché cases – not even in his watch, which still seems warm though of course this is impossible. Underneath his framed captain’s license, no pictures of Daddy or me or anyone else, not a scrap of my letters or the fountain pen I gave him but there are a few old tax returns, some carbon copy plane tickets and, buried deep under everything else, a metal Altoids box. Oh, here’s Daddy! I prepare myself for anything, breath suspended like a net to catch the secrets, maybe a lock of hair to trace to Daddy or to me or to anyone else, or one of my baby teeth in a folded-up note, a ring I might have won from a candy machine, perhaps a phone number to call with a voice answering tremulously on the other end of the line and yet really, what would I do if there were a cache of diamonds etched with serial numbers or a key to some old address of ours? But the box opens so easily it almost pops from my fingers, revealing pristine creases of virgin wax paper and pure white rows of refreshing, untouched mints, a message clear as a door of light closing tight behind me.
Kalliopy Paleos’ poetry publications include Mediterranean Poetry and Gnashing Teeth Press; her prose has been included in ERGON Magazine for Greek-American Arts and Letters, The Ekphrastic Review, Flash Boulevard, and is also forthcoming in The Mackinaw Journal of Prose Poetry.
