It's Still Life

Prose: Postscripts to a Story

Once upon a time, my dad and I were a story. I speak about him in the narrative now.

My dad was Swedish, but turns out that might not be so. My sister swabbed her mouth for an ancestry DNA test, and discovered that she’s German and English. Seems Dad’s father claimed he was Swedish because no one admitted to being German during WWI. My sister said she had lived someone else’s lie, but for me, Dad and I were still our own story.

But Dad was to never know, remaining proud of being Swedish – of his diamond-bright blue eyes and blonde hair that sun-bleached towhead while in the tropics during WWII.

I don’t know how old I was when I stopped calling him Daddy, when I started calling him Dad. He must’ve felt our story shift, like discovering you’re not Swedish.

These poems/prose are draft versions, written in participation of Poetic Asides, Day 23 “Family” November poem-a-day challenge. The aim: to produce a chapbook for submission. ©Misky 2022 Shared with #amwriting on Twitter. Images are ©Misky, and created using AI-Midjourney.