17 The Drooper’s labored breaths warm my neck as he hobbles on my arm to the end of the piano keys. I adjust my collar with my free hand. I cannot in good conscience address the itchy stain growing in each armpit. I should have refused his request. Too close for comfort. Far too close. So many years. Time. Slipping away into the mist and now frozen almost as still as my eyes on the coffin. We inch forward for an eternity. Then we arrive. “Goodbye, my son,” says The Drooper, dropping a withered rose on the lid. Once he finishes, I pass off the Drooper to the Plum, and they totter away together into the mist. The Stork shoots me a glare before disappearing after them. Pay them no mind. They play their grief their way, and I will play it mine. I kneel until I can press my nose against the slick side of a black box. It smells like him. Somehow dark and plastic all at once. Perhaps a hint of the cologne he dashed on his collar every morning before work. A complicated smell for a complicated man. Complicated as my relationship with him, even in death. “Goodbye, Father,” I whisper.
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