Memories of Summer

[Week 2: Maggie]

(Words written around twenty years ago)

Dear Michael,

They say that dreams can give you strength even in the darkest hour. So the question that is always on my mind is "How much did you suffer dad?". Was your present so dark that your dreams of being a rockstar just took over and that's why you left to never see me being born or Nancy losing her first tooth?

Mum still keeps the jacket that apparently belongs to you next to our front door. As if you are suppose to, after seventeen years, realize you forgot something and come back to get it. But that's not all, your lighter and cigarettes after a decade lies on the counter and the photos of you plasters every room in the house you couldn't stand.

I can say that I miss you. How can you miss something or someone that you don't even know?

But that doesn't mean that every parents meeting me and mum had to go to didn't hurt my innocent eyes as I saw all the other perfect mums with their plasted smiles and perfect curls, next to the dads in suits and a nice cut just sitting there.

They knew their "duty". But your seat was empty and got colder and colder by the second.

Mum even brags about that Nancy might follow in your steps. I don't know about that. Nans might speak a different language when her angelic fingers brush over the string of your old guitar. But she wouldn't leave me. She can't.

"If the world falls down, you need to help me hold it up Mags."

She always says that. With tears in her golden eyes or a smile on her red lips.

So dad, if you ever decide to show up you can search for me at the East beach Art Academy. I got in. Not because of my grades but actually because of a recommendation letter.

I was so proud and if anyone could be prouder it must have been Nans. But it was all ruined when mum said:

"Mickey would have been so fond of your art."

I wanted to tear everything I have ever drawn apart.

My portfolio of both color and shades felt like poison in my hands. But mum was just as blind as she has always been. I wonder if there was a time where she didn't think that she still was your top priority, or a time where her mind wasn't full of venom from just your name.

I can't help but just picture you drowning between bottles of alcohol in some slum. Still living in the same town, just that you have forgotten everything and everyone have even forgotten what you looked like. The only thing still holding your dark heart beating is a faded dream of beats of rock and girls throwing themselves into your open arms.

Well, dad I really wish you would have met my boyfriend. You would have hated him. He is exactly the type you don't want your daughter to date.

A dangerous smile that can get any girls knees weak, a mind that can manipulate anyone's feelings and a lock of golden hair that always falls perfectly over his forehead that makes all the oxygen in the room disappear.

His name is John Collins. The honorable football player of East beach and the inheritor to a company which goes back generations in his family. Does it burn your eyes dad? Does it hurt your ears when I cry his name? Does your hands want to pull me away from him?

All the holy water in the world wouldn't be able to save your soul.

In the last ten years, there have been 2894 in East beach that has died named Michael. Where you among them? Did you just slip thru the piles of paper without making it to mums eyes? Where the last letters about you giving us warmth in the winter as mum set them on fire? Maybe you actually came to use then. But it also means I have to burn this paper.

Michael and Melanie. Mickey and Mell.

How could anyone do this to someone they have looked in the eyes and said that they loved? Isn't love supposed to be forever? If not, what do we even live for?

I would like to say that I am my mom's daughter. But that would mean I am pathetic. If anyone ever called me my dad's daughter, what is the difference between being called a liar, thief, and demon?

Has the horns on your head and the knife you use to stab people in the back moved on to a new family?

Would you ever bring them around to bring mom back to reality? Or maybe she is already too far gone?

How come the shadow of you is still alive and present, but your body and soul is gone and will probably never return to fill the whole of promises that you left behind?

I guess you really got the immortal end you always hoped for.

Bye, Michael

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Dearest reader

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Your dearest,

6th of April