A Bird in Flight | ✔︎

Chapter eleven: Suffocating pasts

Ensley

"DADDY, LIFT ME HIGHER! Higher!" I yelled in excitement as my father spun me around, lifting me up—closer to the sky. I was five and I was flying.

"Touch the sky, sweetie. Say hello to Mr. Moon from me," he laughed, lifting me onto his shoulders.

I reached for the stars dotting the black mass which stretched over my head. I felt like the I was the centre of the universe and everything revolved around me.

I giggled, clutching onto his neck. "Silly Daddy, you can't touch the sky. It's too far away."

"No, no, darling. There is no distance between yourself and your dreams." He had his head tilted to the sky and like me, appeared overwhelmed by our insignificance. "You remember that, Ensley. You're a fighter. You are the light to the darkness of this world." He lowered me to the ground and I wrapped my tiny arms around him.

"Daddy?" I whispered, my small voice muffled by the fabric of his shirt presses up against my face.

"Yes, Ensley?"

I pulled my head away from his shirt and lifted my gaze to meet his. "Why do you and Mommy fight? If I were the light to the dark then I could stop you fighting."

He shook his head and carefully pulled me to the ground. There we laid, side-by-side, fingers entwined as we started at the sky above, twinkling with stars and an infinite amount of promises and dreams.

"Love is complicated, honey," he said after a while of lying in complete silence. "You run and see if they chase. You fall and see if they catch you. You need to trust them, Ensley. Trust is the key to a good relationship. And then you'll know, then you'll be willing to spend more time together and develop your relationship."

I heard the glass door sliding open and my mother rushing into the background. She scooped me up in her arms and started yelling at my father, "You idiot! It's freezing out here! She might catch a cold for Christ's sake."

And then she stormed inside and locked me in my room like my father was an evil man who I needed to be protected from. I remember staring outside through that same glass door five years later, watching my father stand in the backyard as icy drafts swept through. He was holding handfuls of pills and his breath was

frosting in the air, his boots crunching against the frozen ground as he exited through the back gate and out into the dark street. I noticed how he never looked at the stars anymore. How he could never find peace up there with the aliens, the planets and moons. He was too busy fighting an internal battle inside his mind. He either was too doped up on pills to see two millimetres in front of him or a dark cloud of misery had consumed him and refused to let him communicate with anyone.

I remember it was the day after he walked out into the cold, empty street that I found I him. I remember screaming at the top of my lungs when I opened the study door and found him sprawled across the floor, eyes closed, lips parted and bottles of pills surrounding him. I remember uncurling his hand which was clenched into a fist and taking out a note addressed to me:

You are not like me, Ensley. You won't let the darkness consume you as it did to me. You may not be whole, but that does not mean you are broken. You are the light to the dark. I will always love you. I will always remember the stars and the sky, the dreams and the promises. Protect your sisters and take care of your mother. I'm sorry. I love you.

- Your loving father: Ignacio Steed.

I decided to never show my mother and not even my sisters that note. It is still stored underneath my bed in a shoebox along with a sample of treasured photographs. I could never bring myself to go into that study again.