The Telescope

The next few entries in this blog will be from random writings in my notebook that I purchased promising myself to fill one each month. One 70 page spiral bound notebook equals 2.29 pages to write each day to fill it. In three days, I've filled already a third of it.

I was outside sitting on the porch of the house I was staying at briefly in Knob Noster, Missouri; the state and town that I desperately wanted to leave a year ago and yet here I was, again, smoking a cigarette observing the obvious clues of autumn approaching. I watch the smoke curl up into the sky and here I see a star by it's lonesome flickering rapidly in the distance all shades of colors as some stars do. I immediately wish for a telescope so that I could get a closer look at what's happening light years away that is now reaching me at this point in time. I then remember that my father one year for Christmas purchased me a telescope and how excited I was to open it and try it out. My father was excited too; he started planning a star party and made many grandiose plans. It never worked. Fast forward to a year later. I received a nicer, more advanced model than the previous one and we were certain it would work. That one didn't either. I imagined he purchased these telescopes at Wal-Mart. 

I start to feel a sort of regret? Remorse? Guilt? I wished we could have shared that moment together and the many other attempts my father made to do things with me; I was his daughter and he loved me. The broken telescopes pay tribute to each and every time we tried to find an activity to do together. Frost-bitten air as I try to hold a shotgun up at 12 years old, the smell of dust and old men smoking, shooting arrows inside a similar smelling club-cabin, the crunch of leaves beneath my feet. 

My father sees me slipping away from him as I see the 12 year old girl slipping away from myself. I promise them both that I won't leave. It's a promise that I can't keep.