I Gave My Child The Strength To Fly.
But if he flies too close to the sun, I can only watch.
I knock on the door. No answer. I knock again.
“What,” he says. Each letter a distinct syllable, thick with disdain, annoyance, and the hatred that flavors most interactions with my quarantined fourteen-year-old.
I step inside.
“Just checking in.” My words are as tentative as my approach.
“Can you get out?” His shout is automatic, reflexive, punctuated with an elongated “PLEEEEEASE.” Vowels stretched in feigned politeness — a mocking attempt to convert animosity into respect.
I pause.
He sees my regular check-ins as an enemy intrusion. I’m prepared for his reaction. His anger is a language I’ve learned to decode these past fourteen months of isolation—his depression and anxiety concealed behind a wall of rage. I hold my tongue and absorb his animosity.
I search for his Goth-black curls.
A ring of red haze cuts the dark. LEDs outline the perimeter of his loft bed. The four-post frame, draped in heavy blankets, creates a cave, an alcove, a crawl space where he burrows in his solitude.
Black-out shades hang like soldiers, protection against the invasion of daylight…
