Remembering My Father’s Face

Lying on the couch, my father disappeared like smoke through an open window. Not even his impression on the pillow remained. He had died forty years ago. I tried to remember what he looked like, but whenever I tried to think of him, I could only remember his tight black curly hair, his rounded shoulders, his pained feet, not his face. I tried over and over again to picture him. I saw him carrying his suitcases up the staircase, his gray fedora tilted forward, so I couldn’t see his face. I saw him start his electric shaver, in his white undershirt, but when he lifted it to shave, there was no face in the mirror, only a bright burning light. I heard him singing, “It’s a quarter to three, there’s nobody here…” His face was a blur of chalk, an erasure, a wind lifting leaves and straw. When the leaves fell, there was only dust and air.