my papa is a skeleton

when I was little, I didn't want my papa to hold my baby sister. I thought he was a skeleton. he was 6'2 and skinny as an orphan. I was surprised when his frail, lanky arms could hold her ten-pound body. "I was in the Navy, you know. A deep-sea diver." he told me stories about Vietnamese children and the fog in Bermuda. I couldn't believe him. "But how, Papa? How can a skeleton do that?" he never answered my question. I watched that skeleton for fourteen years, angry and loud and brave. the skeleton that I loved read every book, and drew pictures of castles that I will engrave into my skin. but the skeleton truly became skin and bones. I've never seen a man so lost in his own backyard. staring at the sky, staring at his wife, staring at me. he didn't recognize any of it. I have dreams of him now, in stained jeans and a big, rage-ridden head on delicate bones. I miss the skeleton who would tell me stories about the big pine tree in his backyard. I miss the skeleton who gave me hugs like he'd never see me again. maybe he knew that one day, sooner rather than later, he would never see me again. he would look with the same eyes that taught me how to pray and not see a granddaughter, but rather see a brown-haired girl. "You remind me of my granddaughter, Sophie." that was the day I decided a skeleton could never be more than dead, and the conviction that allowed his arms to hold my sister was gone. he will never see more than shapes in a book now, and his pictures are only color. but my papa is the supernatural being that taught me skeletons could love, and that is the skeleton I choose to remember. the living one, not the absent one.