The Cedarville Review 2020

PROSE | 51 Before I can say anything, the ball slaps into my palm once more. I meet my father’s gaze as he teasingly asks where I’ve been. “Thinking,” I tell him, and toss the baseball back to his waiting glove. To say any more would be tomake everything too real, too present. I don’t want to accept what I know to be true. My father doesn’t pry, just lobs the ball over- hand back tome. As we continue with our game, back and forth, overhand and underhand, I try to ignore the pressure against the backs of my eyelids, and instead move through the rote mo- tions of catch, pivot, release that he taught me when I was seven. But it won’t last. I know that it can’t, not when all I can see now is the faint afterimage of my grandfather’s smiling eyes in my father’s own, forehead worn and crack- ing, lingering until the day he falls apart and is no more.