We run our fingers across a white canvas. The edges are rough, cutting the tips of our fingernails. We back away from the wall, examining the fresh cuts. We glance back to the pale wall, briefly touching it, wondering why it has been forgotten.

We look to each other. I slip my hand between your fingers, closing them on your rough knuckles. Fingers remain loose and open, as if you’re scared to close them. You seem to fear that what you have in this moment won’t last. I can feel this heaviness you’re holding, it inches closer to me by the minute, wrapping itself around my wrists.

We look back, our blood still faintly noticeable across the pale canvas. I feel the tears slipping from your cheeks beginning to sting my skin. I grab your hand tighter as these moments we rest in are passing. I feel as though I have been holding you all my life. From the start of day one, when your hands weren’t as rough as they are now. When you gripped my small fingers in between the life lines on your palm, something I know by muscle memory. I remember my arms reaching down past your shoulders as you sat me above your head, I cupped my small hands on your chin as you smiled. I could see the world from that perspective, feel the wind through my blonde hair. Yet, everything abruptly stops.

You tell me it’s okay, as if this agony you feel is something you regret. Your hand loosens around mine, your fingers slipping through the cracks of my own. You tell me of the homosexual slurs that have been called out from the streets, and you tell me to not say anything.  I fold my fingers in your palm, tracing back to your life lines, trying to possibly fix what has broken you. I envelope my hand around your thumb, hoping maybe you will feel the pressure subsiding, the stress maybe falling a little bit off of your shoulders. Nothing changes, you still heavily breathe, your eyes tensing with each inching second.

I remember the smile you used to embrace, the laugh lines encircling your eyes. You taught me happiness in a world of burning hell. You taught self confidence when your life was at its breaking point. Where everything you knew just seemed to take every last fight out of you. And still, you smiled. I remember the black cowboy hat that would sit atop your head, I would trace the rim with my hands. Sometimes I would look up to you thinking how it would have been if you were not my dad, if God had somehow chosen a separate life for me. Yet sometimes I thought I would see God in you. The afternoons I would spend sitting out on the hot tarred driveway, laying back to look up at the sky. I remember getting angry because he never seemed to hear me, no matter how many times I spoke to him, or raised my voice. All I heard was silence in between the blowing leaves, or the songs the crickets played somewhere in those green fields. Sometimes I feel the presence of laughter, it blows through the wind as I walk in the fields behind our house. I brush my hands up against the overgrown grass, I feel regretful for these years that have gone unnoticed. The years of memories that I have suppressed.

I feel as though I have no words for you when your hand finally slips from mine. A silence floods through our bodies. Every emotion has come running back to me, hitting my chest. It starts breaking my ribs, it’s screams to be let out. I look up to with a faint smile, a tear at the corner of my eye. I try to catch this moment with you as you stand solemnly next to me. I focus on your heavy breathing, a deep breath in, and a long exhale.

You seem too angry these days, muttering away at every thing that irritates you. Yet, some days you apologize, “I’m sorry I was being such a b****.” I will stare out the car window, hearing your voice echo in the background. I quietly reply with an “It’s fine,” and the car goes silent again. I try to teach you the lessons that I value, to take life for its worth, and value every moment of it. I try to teach you how to calm down, and take a breather, showing you that often the things you get angry with are in fact “ridiculous.” I have experienced the fact of being selfish to not caring about what I have had all my life, what has stuck with me through thick and thin. I want you to realize that there is more to life than observing what has been lost throughout these past painful years.

I twirl my finger as I outline the tips of your hand. I comment on how big your hands are, what it would be like if I had hands such as yours. “You wouldn’t want big man hands like mine,” you cackle. I rest my hand on top of yours, aligning them perfectly with one another. You reassure me by saying that my hands are elegant. I close my eyes, thinking about the time you have called me a princess, and to “never wave above the tiara.” You close the tops of your fingertips around mine, settling them close to your life lines.

As a child, I felt special to be in the room next to yours, knowing you were always right next door in case of an emergency. I enjoyed the mornings I would climb under the covers with you, staring at your resting face as I tried withholding laughter that could disrupt your sleep. Over time your hands became tired and raw, when your life had hit its breaking point. I never realized the pain my mother had caused you, and the money that went down the drain from all those court cases. You tell me one morning, in between sighs, that you have walked from Scarborough to Windham, which is roughly 15 miles. “The car wouldn’t start, and I was the last one to leave the restaurant.” My smile fading at the sound of your voice. I crept slowly back out of the room to sit in front of the wood stove, outside the door. I thought of how tired you were, and the hours it took to get home. The relief you must have felt when you walked up the front stairs to unlock the door. This is when I realized your hands weren’t yours anymore.

Our car rides have been blanketed by a silence. We ride with the windows down, letting our hands fall in the wind. I ask to turn the radio on, hoping to hear you sing along with the Billy Joel or Michael Jackson. I close my eyes again trying to capture this moment that won’t last. I try picturing the afternoons when Andrea Bocelli would echo between our voices, as we tried desperately to understand his elegant Italian. Yet he too had just become another CD that we no longer listen to.

I would say that our canvas is bare, It’s naked and clean. I lean my head on your shoulder and slip my hand through yours again. I think of the beautiful memories that I have made with you, and the silence that we have shared together. Our canvas is beautiful. As we stand together in this room, facing a blank wall, a blank canvas, I ask you to close your eyes. I ask you to think of the memories we have captured in our lifetime together. And when you open them, I ask what you see. I do this for myself as well. I open my eyes and I remember the moment you threw me so high into the sky that I thought I saw heaven. I see them dancing across our canvas, and when I turn to look at you, I see them dancing in your eyes.

If I could tell you the purpose of your sadness I would, the purpose of your anger, the purpose of your love and happiness, I would. But instead, I tell you that some things are meant to be left unsaid. As the love I feel for you, it’s an unspoken thing, because I can never find any word or phrase that would express how much I truly love you. How much I love your presence, the entirety of your portrait, the entirety of this canvas we share together. And when people define you with homosexual slurs, and hateful words, I sometimes wish that they could see God in your soul as I do.