My memory of you is saturated with colorful doll dresses. The ones you gifted me when I was a child. The doll’s now missing an arm, a leg, its head, its colorful dress. Though some still lay beautifully dressed in the basement, dust-covered. Your belongings and photos lay next to them, abandoned, molding. Some are lost, just as you are, but I tried to find them.

For your son, who grew up with no father, and the selfishness of his mother, he now stands with the headless doll that I placed in his hands. He wants to return to the land where you sleep, surrounded by the dampness of the earth.

For your wife, who smokes in her bedroom. The walls you shared: yellow and peeling. The ceiling is crumbling.

It was too suffocating, even for you.
It was too suffocating, even for her.

For the same wife that forced her plum nail polish onto the unwilling son that you left behind, the toxin on his fingernails was not unlike her presence in your life. She ran away with another man to a foreign country, unwilling son in tow. She dragged him from the place where you rested beneath cold soil, the land where your shadow still walks.

On foreign land, your wife blew out her candles on her birthday—the same day your flame extinguished—and celebrated joyous life.

On foreign land, your son condemns his mother for her treachery and desires to return to the safety of your shadow.

On foreign land, memories of you slowly fade, but the dolls still stay,
their eyes rolling to the back of their heads, refusing to watch you leave.