I feel different. I don’t know what this feeling is.

My parents are alive somewhere, but I can’t wait for them any longer. Maybe we’ll bump into each other someday. I hope it’s somewhere excellent, the desert, the Louvre, the Taj Mahal at sunset, instead of the bread aisle in some annoying Podunk supermarket, ’cause that’s the shitty little town where we’ve all managed, somehow, to end up.

Will I even recognize them? Would I be able to describe them to the Feds, pick them out of a lineup, identify the bodies? I curl up in bed and close my eyes and don’t stop straining until I see them in my mind.

My father is Daniel Edward Freeman. Not too tall, 5'10" or 5'11". Brown hair, brown eyes. Smokes menthols and cracks jokes. He was born on the eighth of August (okay, wait, he was fifty last year, and his birthday hasn’t happened yet, so 2015 minus 50 is), 1965. He always liked math and English but he never felt comfortable at school and ended up joining the army. When I asked him about being a hippie in the army, all he said was, “It was a job.” I understood.

He spent some time stationed in Germany. I once found a postcard from a woman named Ingrid addressed to Dad but it was in German and I didn’t know what it said. He always said he’d teach me to speak German. He taught me a couple of things like es tut mir leid and entschuldigung. I don’t remember what they mean.

He was a boxer when he was younger. He got medals or trophies or whatever for boxing in the army and in prison. I don’t know, it seems like he really wants to be gentle, he tries to be, but he just isn’t. He’s the reason I know how to throw a punch.

He reads all the time, sci-fi books and Heavy Metal comics. Those were the only things I can remember being really afraid of as a child. As I got older he started to recommend certain books to me—Weaveworld, Swan Song, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—but I never read them. Maybe I should, maybe they’ll help me understand him. I doubt it, though. But I wish I’d read them, I wish I hadn’t just ignored him, assumed his books weren’t good enough or something. I wish I could tell him I’m sorry. I wish I could have helped him. God, I’m so sorry.