While I’m reading, a sentence will grab me and force me to stop. I pay tribute to other authors by sharing their Damn Fine Sentences with you. Then I recount a memory the words bring up for me. It’s about how books connect with your life.
*****
“Death isn’t the only way to die though it can be argued that it’s the most merciful.”
———Hanif Abdurraqib
——--There’s Always This Year
My father waited like a sniper at the end of the dark hallway in our house, on his knees wearing an Afro wig and a backwards fur coat. What showed up most clearly in the shadows were Dad’s malicious red eyes and the partial plate he’d pushed halfway out of his mouth for fangs. On his knees put him eye level with my baby brother who was about to enter the hall from the opposite end, coming from the sunlit kitchen into the sadistic gloom.
I should have stepped into the hallway to block my baby brother’s view of Dad—our father who enjoyed the sound of his own son screaming for his life.
Because I was a coward, my brother screamed and lost his balance and fell on the floor hard and screamed again, and it kills me that I did not protect my baby brother from our sniper father.
And it kills me.
And it kills me.
And it kills me.
*****
“Death isn’t the only way to die though it can be argued that it’s the most merciful.”
———Hanif Abdurraqib
——--There’s Always This Year
My father waited like a sniper at the end of the dark hallway in our house, on his knees wearing an Afro wig and a backwards fur coat. What showed up most clearly in the shadows were Dad’s malicious red eyes and the partial plate he’d pushed halfway out of his mouth for fangs. On his knees put him eye level with my baby brother who was about to enter the hall from the opposite end, coming from the sunlit kitchen into the sadistic gloom.
I should have stepped into the hallway to block my baby brother’s view of Dad—our father who enjoyed the sound of his own son screaming for his life.
Because I was a coward, my brother screamed and lost his balance and fell on the floor hard and screamed again, and it kills me that I did not protect my baby brother from our sniper father.
And it kills me.
And it kills me.
And it kills me.
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