3 P.M.

I’ve run out of tears. And I realize, the room is less cold now. Someone has turned on the heater.

Slowly, I unfold myself. And I turn on my back, like a wounded animal.

“Fuck.” There is something hard against my back, digging into my spine. Frustrated, I pull myself onto my haunches. There is something inside the mattress. A rectangular bulge in the cotten. They had sewn it back up, held together by crude stitches.

I begin to peel it open. Stitch and stitch comes apart under my red stained fingernails. Until it unveils itself, clear as day.

It’s…a notebook. Leather bound covers and worn pages. I recognize it immediately. The military insignia. Gold dripped. It is my father’s journal.

I skim through the pages. There must’ve been a thousand entries. Pages and pages of our lives in pen and ink, scribbled after a long day. I smell the beer in its seams and its dark blotches between the pages.

Against my simmering curiosity, I snap it shut.

Twisted delusions. I bury it under the mattress. I don’t need to read what happened, I’ve lived it. Every page, every line.

Every lie.