Outing

this time it's my father who waits and I leave him, wondering what his waiting looks like - I know so little of what he is like when he is alone I suspect that he sleeps as he does when he suspects I'm not looking - when we were separated, he took me to the movies so he could fall asleep, he was leading a wild life back then I tore up the pictures of him with any other woman than my mother I said it was an accident and an accident it was - hours alone, playing on the market square while he was courting at a café, he cleared his throat as if he was about to give a speech, toasted with that grey German woman, I had a coin, was told to buy an apple - whom was I destined for? father, mother: one is dead and the logic is lost on me, what kind of creator makes the laws, swings the the scythe and decides the time, where can I complain? - I get into my father's car, we drive past the places where my mother existed, I pretend he is her, talk about maxi pads, my menstrual cycle, men - maybe my father sometimes also pretends I’m my mother, maybe I don't even notice it a store bell rings, she who can no longer appear, appears and I appear beside her, sixteen years old, my father with our shopping bags, she smiles and waves, as if she will never go away - the gas pedal merciless, she dies again, dies away, we don't say anything but see the same then we point at the places: ‘here’, he says ‘and there', I say, ‘remember?’, he says and I say: ‘yes’