Why I'm a Pussy

He isn’t entirely well now. Hasn’t been for years. My infrequent visits to him always seem the last. Goodbyes that, as it turns out, never are. Fast forward one, maybe two years and there he is. In his living room. Cane in hand with the halting though witty repartee.

Still savage. Even given the unwelcome frailty. He spits on it as it takes residence and liberties within the man he once was. Envy and disappointment in his eyes when he takes me in. But always love. “What I wouldn’t give to be you, kid,” he tells with a regretful tsk. His slur and mumble comprehensible to me so accustomed.

His lovely wife sits at the dinner table with the women folk while he “interviews me” as he likes to say. Frequent glances our way in her absent chit-chat.

His eyes are puffy as he again looks me up and down. Irony within their cloudy reflection. Everything he’s never been as I sit before him. In him, all that I never will.

Isn’t a mystery what made him. Made most our men that greatest of generations. Their courage still evident through their bodies’ falter. Audacity replaced in me by ill-fitting timidity. The ease of life evident in my appearance. A heart as soft as my body is hard, imposing. My flourish as I grew unquestioned where his forever harried. Unyielding strength from lifetime of trials I’ll never know.

Both godsend and pity, this easy life of mine. Though I can't help but wonder. What savage I could have been in this withered man before me? What forging hardships I’ll never know because of his strength those days gone by.