Small-Talk

Karo Sadowicz

My father's heavy baritone murmured along the walls and painted the house with its deep secretive whisper. His voice vibrated in my throat when he spoke, but I could never make out what the words meant. Jumbled like marbles in his mouth, they rolled out on the table in a shapeless mess. My father never said important things with us in the room. We were worth only sports and the weather. His speech may have been coming from a radio, meant for all listeners or no one at all.

Sometimes late at night his words would tiptoe around my door, bearing his lone overtures, forgetting that walls, like doors, have two sides and that my ear would be pressed to the other. Yet the words moved with such speed that I caught only the hum of their flight.

His hands were never still while he was talking, but would crawl lazily over one another, over napkins and bottles and pencils and silverware, always caressing something. He loved a messy tabletop. He would look at his hands while he spoke. I wondered where he looked when he spoke at night, when he spoke softly to the house, when he made it shiver. nth

The World is More Violent (continued)

Something that could only be titled "Dinner at My Parent's House". The bourgeoisie, my fellow proletariat, my parents and I are all gathered around the table. I'm sitting in the same seat I've sat in my entire life, my sister has that same smug look on her face, my brother is still pushing all of my buttons and my parents are having the same fight or as my mother likes to call it "a discussion" they've been having for the past thirty-five years.

The entire time, I can't stop thinking how did I get back here and more importantly how the hell do I get out. If that weren't enough, I'm forced to listen to my mother give another speech on why the world doesn't make sense any more. "I don't know why they have to drive and talk on their phones". Now just so we're clear. This is the same woman that would grab my brother by the collar, flailing the other hand at me, grabbing me by the hair, slam us into one another, all while barreling down the freeway at seventy five miles an hour, controlling five tons of solid steel with just her left thigh.

Suddenly, she's concerned about highway safety. nth