Dysphoria

The kitchen is spun in warm brown colors and nearly soundless, insulated. The scent of butter and fried meats ease in and out of lungs.  And there is mostly that quietness, an aloneness, the boy's fork working the edges of his plate. 

The grandmother is at the head of the table and the father sits somewhere in the middle, a haze, present in the same intangible way as a sound or a scent.  The father is busy with his own food.  His face is slack.  Blank.  Nothing.  Two tired blue eyes gazing and lost behind clumps of raven tangles. 

The boy works the plate and eats.

The father's mouth is pulled into a long and permanent frown, the corners blending bark-like as near to the middle of a hard, military chin as possible.  Just parts of a face mostly overlooked because of its severity.

But the grandmother is still in her chair, food neglected, her eyes tremble in the sockets.  Waiting.  Worried.  Somehow expectant.  Her hands only move when the boy moves his fork across the plate, a twitch, a pulling in of the fingers.

An explosion and everything is bright blue electricity.

The father is out of his chair, a phantom tornado, a fast moving mouth and violent, becoming the whole sensory world.  The boy's stomach walls beat against his ribs. 

The boy is not me.  The boy is you.