electra complex

after many years of a slow tango, (clasp, release, fight, anger, passion, frenetic languor, slow slow quick slow) and a landscape torn by a private war, my father and i are consummating our love affair.

if you asked me, i would tell you that i always felt loved by my parents, even when they were nipping at my heels, seemingly never satisfied with anything i chose to do. but even though i knew i was loved, i still remember every word of praise that my father ever spoke to me, because the phrases were so few and far between.

but a few moments ago, we were sitting in our living room, and i'd been reading poetry aloud to them (Milton, for the curious), and i said to him, as i arose to get dressed that i wish i'd known him in his twenties, when he was bearded, and crazy and watched double feature kung fu movies, and did brilliant physics but was also obsessed with star trek, and star wars, and read comic books, and went to plays, and recited poetry, and went camping on long slow weekends by rushing rivers with my mother, and took thousands of photographs of her that he developed himself in his bathroom, and built bombs, and thought that he and the communist party might change the world.

and he said to me, "you were there. all my life, you've always been there."