It had been a cool morning unlike today. When it was that cold, the air sounded different, and you could hear the trains up in Boerne from our house. I loved these mornings with my dad. At his house, I was closer to school, so I could sleep in for a little while longer. He would sit in his office watching the morning news, working on his cups of coffee before he would eventually switch to his glasses of wine. My bathroom was across the office door; it was close enough that his Italian vanilla creamer would tiptoe its way across the hallway into my nose. I’d quickly brush my teeth and glob on my hair products to go sit on his lap. We would sit together within the morning’s stillness before the buzz of the day crept in. The news was on low volume so you could hear the birds fluttering over our garden and our neighbor’s dogs playing in their backyard. As I’d try to pretend what the news was about, my dad would type softly on his computer, planning his day. Eventually we dragged ourselves up and walked to the car. Sometimes, he would take his mug of coffee with him. I think that morning he did, the sweet smell following me all the way to school. He let me play Katy Perry on the way. It was cloudy and the air smelled of rain, the day already threatening to be uncomfortable. We got to the school drop off line. I went in for a kiss.

“Love you, Daddy, see ya when I see ya.”

I don’t remember what he said. I slammed the door and went inside.

On that Sunday, he died. My mom told me he was cleaning his gun, and it accidentally went off. I went on with my life, I thought he’d be at our house if I just simply went over there. I listened to Selena Gomez while I put on makeup for the memorial service. I put on a black dress I’d never wear again. I shook hands with people I didn’t know. Hugged my family and friends. Prayed. I went back to school after only four days of being gone.

One day, I got called into the head office and asked about my attendance and told to sign a form acknowledging that extended absences couldn’t happen again. The lady was nice, but suddenly, I was trying hard not to cry. I focused on the harsh white LED lights cascading off her long, black acrylic nails as she typed. I listened to the sound of the keyboard. Another girl walked in, another delinquent about to be lectured. The lady handed me the pen and slid the paper across the wooden table.

 “Just sign at the bottom.”

I stood up and grabbed the pen, shaking as I tried to sign. My eyes welled as I saw: “To the parents of.” A tear loudly smacked onto the paper and made the ink sprawl across the page.

 “My dad died, I’m sorry.”

I felt the lady grab my arm as I began to cry.

 “Oh honey, I didn’t know. I’m so sorry,” she said.

I heard the other girl in the room, in her soft voice, “I’m so sorry.” I went home early that day. After this incident, for a while, I didn’t dare say the words. A few weeks later I was sent home with a letter about how I was no longer in the school district, and I couldn’t go to my middle school anymore. Which made sense, we had sold my dad’s house quickly, the address we used for my public-school records. I got in my mom’s car that afternoon in the pick-up line, hysterical that I was going to have to leave all my friends. My mom swung her car around into the parking lot, left the car on with me inside, and marched to the principal’s office where she apparently “ripped him a new one.”

After a few months, the realization began to truly plunge its claws into my skin. I would wrap myself up in my dad’s clothes like a cocoon, trying to squeeze out every drop of him left in them. I replayed the same shows over and over again, like how I hoped I could replay my own life. I rewatched the characters I’ve known for years make the same mistakes, comforted that I always knew what would happen next, that nothing could surprise me.

Yet, there was a feeling I couldn’t quite shake. He was so careful with his guns, always telling me to never go near the safe he stored them in or if I saw one in the house to come and find him. How come the safety wasn’t on? In the car one morning, about three months after he had passed, I looked towards my mom in the driver’s seat. Finally pushed to the edge of my curiosity, I said,

 “Was Daddy murdered?”

She tensed. I saw her shoulders freeze and her grip tighten so much that the car began to drift into the other lane. She slowed down the car and straightened out.

 “No—no—oh my God, have you been thinking that?” she asked, her distress spilling all over the car.

 “Well… yeah.”

It was silent for a long time. We both faced forward, eyes on the road, eyes on what was ahead.

“Daniella… do you know what suicide is?”

I felt myself stop breathing; there was something in my throat. My hands tingled. I felt the weight behind my eyes. I had known what it was, but I hadn’t even thought of that… I hadn’t even thought of that.

I looked at his picture in the mausoleum. Funny how these traditions like putting ash in a wall with a smiling photo plastered on top are supposed to make us feel better. Silly we picked the mausoleum outside because my dad loved the outdoors. And ridiculous he thought I would’ve been better off without him. My face was damp, and my eyes burned. Did he know that would be the last time I saw him? He had a pizza in the oven that day, burnt and about to catch on fire, about to take him and the whole house with it. He planned to eat it or expected to. What happened?

I used to come here all the time. I would grab a coffee and head here after school. I’d listen to the breeze race through the leaves above and carry the scent of freshly dug dirt and flowers to my nose. I’d lay down on the bench and let the cool granite soak into my warm skin. I’d let the wind unwind me and I’d close my eyes and feel the sun lounge across my face. I’d walk around to the other graves, reassured that my dad was with all these people now instead of alone in his house with his frozen pizza and his glasses of wine. That used to make me feel better. It bewilders me that his entire life is now this square on the wall next to Kelly and Tom. 12x12 granite. I wiped the sweat off my sunglasses and peeled myself off the sticky bench. My head ached from the heat. I forced myself to look at the wall. I said goodbye to him, then to Kelly and Tom, went to my car, and turned on the AC.

One warm spring day, Kheya got a pup with a big blue bow.

He was fluffy and strong, and he surely wasn’t slow.

He dashed through the house and made Kheya grin,

She laughed as she named her new best friend, Franklin.

Franklin played with Kheya and her friends all day long,

They even made him his very own song.

At dinner, when Kheya disliked brussel sprouts,

Franklin would sneak them happily into his mouth.

When middle school started, she’d sometimes come home,

Feeling sad, picked on, and all alone.

But Franklin would cuddle and cover her in drool

And soon she’d forget being teased at school.

High school arrived, and the stress weighed her down,

Her books piled high, her smile turned to frown.

But Franklin lay quietly beside her chair,

Making sure she ate, he truly cared.

Then college day came—excitement mixed with fear,

She hugged Franklin bye as she loved him so dear.

Though he longed for her return each day they were apart,

He was proud of her growth and kept joy in his heart.

Whenever Kheya came back, Franklin curled in her lap,

Her love made him happiest, nothing topped that.

He adored how she blossomed, so gentle, so true,

The kindest of hearts that Franklin ever knew.

But as Kheya grew older, Franklin grew too,

His muzzle turned silver, his legs weaker too.

Yet Franklin felt brave, for Kheya had shown,

That courage and kindness made fears

overthrown.

She noticed his aging with tears in her eyes,

But hid them from Franklin, staying gentle and wise.

She wanted him happy, not stricken from fear,

So she cuddled him close as the ending grew near.

The day came too soon to say goodbye,

Franklin looked at her with a gleam in his eye:

“You’re the best friend I’ve had, I’ll love you for all time,

Forever and always, I’m glad you were mine.”

Kheya kissed Franklin on the head,

“Someday we’ll meet once again,” she said.

She held him close gently, her true, loyal friend,

Till Franklin’s sweet journey met its peaceful end.

The sunset then glowed with a soft golden hue,

And Kheya felt Franklin still watching her too.

He smiled upon her, a gift from above,

Each knowing forever they’d have their unbreakable love.

Late summer, too, enchants me. When the season begins to fade and all that’s left are the soft, lingering lines on your skin from kisses of sunshine, gentle reminders of the people you only see when the sun shines that bright. August beams evoke sweet nostalgia and longing, summer’s final hug goodbye. And the September winds creep in and blow the warm sand away, yet you still find it in your hair and pockets. All that you wish for is to relive it. Spending days melting and slipping away under the sun, waiting for the night, so you can go and be drunk and young. When the air begins to cool off but your cheeks still turn red and the pavement is still warm. Everyone is wearing clothes that can be slipped off. You laugh too loud and someone shushes you because their parents are asleep inside. And you don’t quite understand it yet that you’re in a time gone by. Every sticky kiss, stumble in a bar, hookup in the back seat, half-lit cigarette, day gone by, it’s all burning fast. The façade of thinking you will have many nights, infinite chances, fades. Summer isn’t forever, neither is youth, that’s why it feels so electric, why it makes me reckless, because some part of me already knows it won’t last.

My dad took a sip of his wine as he laughed at me.

“When I am dead, I’m gonna come back to haunt you, and I’m gonna do that, I’m gonna pull on your leg and wake you up.” He cackled.

Typical of my dad, he was always trying to scare me or prank me somehow, even making plans to do it in the after life. I screamed at him. I had trouble sleeping after that, always thinking that the ghost from The Conjuring was gonna grab my leg and pull me off the bed into the pits of hell.

Fast forward 10 years later, 9 years since my dad has been dead. I have never felt him try and tug on my leg. I remember in the years shortly after he died I would wait and wait for the night he would finally tug on my leg to scare me. It never happened.

I was recently in Paris, where I experienced a slew of strange and unexplainable coincidences, nightmares, and physical anomalies. It only occurred to me that it might be something paranormal when my good friend, who was with me, started experiencing the same things too. We were staying in our friend’s apartment and when we told him of our situation, he said he’s never experienced anything of the sort before. We were being touched in our sleep, suffering from sleep paralysis and nightmares, hearing voices, and noticing our belongings being moved. There were rotten smells, doors slamming open and shut—sometimes even jamming, needing at least two people to force them open or closed again. All of it inexplicable, all of it creepy. We vowed not to talk about it in the apartment, as acknowledging it apparently makes it worse.

On the journey home, I still felt a lingering unease. I experienced random episodes of nausea and anxiety attacks, even throwing up a few times. When I finally landed back in Texas, I felt better. Until one night, my second or third night home, I suddenly felt very paranoid. Paranoia isn’t abnormal for me but for some reason it felt different this night. I planned to sleep with the lights on, something I haven’t done in years. I began to close my eyes, and I was just touching sleep, when suddenly, my leg twitched. I was dreaming about being on a walk and stepping into a pothole. I passed it off as that and dozed off. Same thing happened the next few nights but with varying dreams concerning something happening with my leg. Stepping off a cliff, going to kick a ball, and so on. Until one night, I was wide awake and had just laid down. It was very late and the only thing I could hear was the sound of my fan whirring and the faint hum of cicadas outside. Then, my leg was pulled straight. I sat up. I tried to peer into the pool of darkness that surrounded my bed. I could feel my heart slamming against my chest. I looked at the foot of my bed. Nothing, obviously. Why would there be anything? My imagination. Must be. I allowed myself to breathe again and turned on my lamp. Then I turned on the TV.

I convinced myself that next morning it was my mind playing tricks on me, that I had been dreaming something that made my leg twitch again. I thought about my experiences in Paris. I thought about my dad and his plots to scare me in the afterlife. The late sleepless nights I spent wide awake, going over my mistakes, my embarrassing moments. Spending hours wandering around my mind, reliving times I should’ve appreciated more or pondering about how I’ve changed, and if I’ve changed for the better. I twist and turn under my sheets, tangling myself in a paranoia that I can’t escape.

I feel haunted by multiple things, by my dad, the devil perhaps, and by my own experiences. I like to think it was my dad who pulled on my leg that night—and that he haunted my friend and I in Paris too—just trying to pull me back into the present, out of my head, by scaring the shit out of me and my friends. He’s probably laughing from beyond the grave.

When I was a teenager, there was still some residue of that anxiety. When the rain would come, I wondered how much got lost. A plan that’s “rain-checked,” a phone call that loses signal and drops, or a note that becomes illegible, the ink oozing across the page as the water soaks through the paper. All of these lost communications made me think about how many things I may have lost because of the rain. What if that plan that was “rain-checked” was going to be the beginning of a lifelong friendship, or the joke that was about to be said on the phone call would be the best joke I’ve ever heard, or the note, a love confession from a crush. Over time, I’ve made peace with these what-ifs, reframing the rain as the universe’s way of protecting me from something. What that something is I’m not sure. But I have healed my toxic relationship with the rain. Now, the rain is almost a spiritual experience for me, as well as a nostalgic one. I love feeling the water on my skin, the same water that has been falling from the sky for millions of years. The same water that touched my parents’ and grandparents’ skin. I love smelling it too, bringing me back to when I was younger playing in the front yard, when the world still seemed gentle. I curse my younger self for not appreciating it, for singing “rain, rain, go away, come again another day” over and over until I exhausted myself.

Now I wish for rain.

I hope it rains soon.

When my dad was still alive, he was more leisurely in the morning, often making me late to school because he needed his coffee. I would stand next to him, fully dressed with my backpack on, and would watch him make his cup. The bitter smell of the coffee would marry the sweet aroma of the vanilla creamer, the clinking of the stirring spoon would send chimes throughout the kitchen, the sun would glimmer across the marble countertops and make the swirling steam from the cup even more visible. It fully entranced me. Even if I was rolling my eyes at his ease and slowness because we were already running behind, the scents, sounds, and sights always calmed me, and reminded me of how still the early morning was. That no matter how slowly you stirred, things would eventually combine.

Though my routine has changed as I’ve grown up, it always includes my early morning cup of coffee. Out of all of the chaos, movement, and disorder my life brings, one thing that will always be there to make me slow down, even if for a second, is that first sip of coffee.