7.10

Once, my father opened the chest of drawers in the library. The house was utterly silent, but the drawer has loud rolling casters, and I could feel the reverberation in my teeth. Father walked into the living room and out the door, holding the kinjal he brought back from the Orient, twenty years ago, before he meet my mother. He stalked from the house and didn't come back until morning, wet to the bone. It wasn't raining that night, and I have never asked him what he did.

I will never know my father.