I come to this place when sentiments arise that I can’t revive
in polite conversation. Like when The Wanderer comes on
the radio at work and I’m reminded of how it was my dad’s
favorite karaoke song, how I only heard him sing karaoke
once, where his wife told me he gets up and sings it every time,
the weekend of the family reunion outside Los Angeles
when I was seventeen, where I snuck six Newcastles out
behind the trailer park and drank them by the train tracks,
where an aunt found me and said my dad asked where I was
and I went back in and he took me aside and apologized for
everything, how I’d never drank that many beers before
so all I could do was cry and all he could do was hug me,
how later at the karaoke bar, surrounded by distant family,
we both acted like nothing had happened, where he sang
Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead or Alive and then The Wanderer,
how the words well, I’m the type of guy who will never settle down
coming from his mouth felt like the admission I’d never
get from him straight, how I always confuse the words hug
and squeeze with love and leave, how the words cuz to me
they’re all the same carved space out even for the ones
he made mothers of, how after that weekend I didn’t see
or hear from him again until the blame had shifted and I
was the adult who couldn’t leave the past alone, how today
I still can’t seem to, how he couldn’t be bothered with it,
and how I don’t ever skip the song or tune it out, how
I let it play the full two minutes and forty-eight seconds
and think back about my dad the whole time, how even
in the politest of company there’s no such comfort
in mentioning a word of this to anyone.
Joshua Lillie is a bartender in Tucson, Arizona. He is the author of the chapbook Small Talk Symphony (Finishing Line Press, 2025) and the collection The Outside They Built (Alien Buddha Press, 2025). In 2024, he was a finalist for the Jack McCarthy Book Prize Contest from Write Bloody Publishing. In his free time, he enjoys searching for lizards with his wife and cat.