The Shoebox

There she was again her eyes flashing with anger, glaring at the camera. I ran my fingers over the slightly out of focus picture of this sixteen year old troubled face. When had it all started? All this anger. I glanced at the mirror in front of me. The anger was gone, no not gone but softened. I picked out a photo from the old shoe box which I had pulled from my old cupboard. Everyone used to say how similar we were. We share a fierce stubbornness that went beyond reason. In the photo the similarities are obvious same eyes, same chin and same hair. He still has the thin curly wisps of sandy hair that messily adorn his forehead. That man was my father, a now distant remote figure.

The day he left, a great emptiness filled our house. I had seen it coming. It had been happening for years, the tears, the argument, and the infidelities.

Beautiful Asian Woman Photographing

Two people in a heated argument about religion whe...

English: Angry woman.

And now it was all over. I can remember clearly mum inconsolably throwing herself onto the lounge, tears cascading down her face. Hatred welled up in my sixteen year old heart for this man. My father.

"Go to your girlfriend, we'll be happier with you" the words rang in my ears. My last words to my father. I wonder where he is now. Who he is. Does he ever think of me? Probably not. Now an adult myself I was no longer angry. I could understand the late nights, the affairs, even his leaving the marriage but the not the fact the he had never made an attempt to find me. To see me, to reconcile. Maybe he was dead.

I tossed the photo back into the ill-kept shoe box and fished out another photo out. On the back...