Unemployed

When I was little, we would play all day and live off the land all day. Tommy, Derek, Lisa, Hugh, and I, all the kids from the neighborhood. We would eat berries and apples, or dig up roots and make stew. We knew how to make a fire, we had an old pot, some bowls. We even knew how to catch fish. I would come back home late in the evening, not have any dinner, not watch TV, just go to sleep, anxious for another day.

When my sickness finally made me stay in bed, my dad, who did not have a job, would spend all days with me. He would come up with games and things to do, we wrote a few books, painted some pictures. When we ate spicy food, our eyes would water and we would laugh about it. It was the best thirteen months of my life.

When I died, my mom told my deadbeat dad to move out.

Posted by: Paweł Kowaluk