He was more than a granddad to me. He was a father, a god—a complex, towering figure of contradictions, both tender and tyrannical. For us children, but especially for me, he always had an endless well of patience. Even though he was cruel, I craved his love and attention like sunlight. Today is his birthday. Though he's passed on to some other corner of the universe, I believe we'll meet again someday.

I remember Boxing Day, his birthday, when the family would gather with all their arguments in tow. The day felt like an extension of Christmas but held its own distinct magic. We would set the table together, sometimes cooking, though often simply reheating the leftovers from the day before. It was chaotic, noisy, and unforgettable. Amidst the tumult, there was his steady presence, his pride in orchestrating it all.

He loved to see the children a little tipsy, and it was under his watchful, proud gaze that I had my first sip of alcohol. That memory stays with me—the warmth of the drink, the warmth of his approval. There would always be arguments, loud and raw, but they seemed to be part of the ritual, almost expected, as though his home couldn't contain so many clashing lives without them.

At the end of the night, he’d quiet the room and hand out white envelopes filled with money to all the children. He’d say, “This will be my last year. Next time I won’t be with you.” We laughed it off year after year, not believing him until, bittersweetly, it finally was true. The last Boxing Day without him was empty, a void none of us could fill.

I remember the other parts of him too—the early mornings steeped in black coffee and tobacco smoke, his smart clothing paired incongruously with bare feet. The room of chattering birds where I tried, and failed, to save baby chicks fallen from their nests. The way he shared his thoughts with me, thoughts too heavy for most ears, his doubts and even his regrets. How he once admitted, without flinching, brutal honesty only he could deliver.

He was cruel, especially to women, but never to me until the end when he insisted I had grown fat. With me, he was different, softer. He made me feel safe and protected, even when his anger made others shrink away. He was always fixing things—clocks, kettles, whatever was broken—and growing herbs and flowers with a care that seemed almost out of place in his hands. Those same hands, gentle in one moment, could be brutal in the next, quick to strike my grandmother or anyone who crossed him.

And yet, I more than respect him. I miss him. He was a role model, flawed and difficult, but mine. When I came to him homeless with my own child in my arms, he didn’t hesitate to take us in. He gave me a place where I could rest, where I could breathe.

His life was a mess of contradictions—love and anger, gentleness and violence, pride and regret. But he was my granddad, my father, my god. And I loved him for all of it.

The branches lattice beneath her, black veins
etching the earth's sallow skin. She lies
as if pinned, a moth, the ground
opening its throat to devour her whole.

The trees, thin-limbed and aching, lean in,
their shadows like fingerprints
on her bare thighs. He is above her,
a dark weight, his breath thick
as the stench of iron. Crooked teeth
graze her tender insides, his mouth
a cavern of rot. Her chipped nails catch
on his skin, splintering her last defense—
each struggle a hymn he hums through his teeth.

The bass thumps in the distance,
a pulse too far to save her. His rhythm
is sharper, faster, a saw grinding
through the fragile architecture
of her. Her pelvis cracks beneath
his thrusts, her fragility undone,
his pleasure oozing into her wounds.

Before this—before him—there was the Dragon.
Silver foil unfolded like a revelation,
blue smoke crawling through her lungs,
its touch an anesthetic hymn. She exhaled
herself into nothingness, a slip of a girl,
a husk, unseeing. Vulnerability etched itself
into her marrow. The trees,
silent anatomists, catalogued her surrender.

Now, she is a secret the earth consumes,
her body a whisper the soil licks clean.
The trees will remember the taste of her,
their roots tangled in her hair, their leaves
swaying with the rhythm of her fall.
No one else will know—
only the trees, their mouths sealed with bark,
their witness as still and eternal as stone.

Chop, chop, chop. The marionette slumps, and I’m left holding the blade, sticky with the residue of years. Family? A loose construct. A rotting scaffolding propped up by shared scars and the thinnest thread of blood. They weren’t people—they were collectors. Hoarders of anger, archivists of hurt. They fed on it, bled for it, distilled it into a toxin they called love. I drank it until my veins swelled, until the comatose hum was the only sound I knew.

Their lies were iron bars, their truths blunt objects. They didn’t whisper—they shouted, fists slamming bets on the underdog. "He’ll crack," they said, "too small, too soft." They didn’t count on the dog biting back, didn’t see the will buried beneath the scars.

And the scars—purple, thick, obscene. Skin turned leather under fire. A graft job, patched together with pain and necessity. They thought they’d burned me to ash, but ash has its uses. It fertilizes. It grows things.

Now I’m moving forward, past their circus of anger and blood, past the puppeteer’s stage. The road hums under me, neon signs flashing promises that aren’t real, but maybe they don’t have to be. The truth? There isn’t one. Just will. Just the drive toward some distant point of light. Peace isn’t handed out. You take it. You keep it. And maybe, just maybe, it keeps you too.