Your father in the foyer, ten feet tall. Your father in the hallway beneath the crack in the ceiling, bellowing to the babysitter at the door, Your name is my daughter’s favorite character! 

You hiding now on orange carpet under a makeshift tent, now in the doorframe behind your mother’s panty-hose-packed legs, him shouting, Isn’t that right?

Your wide eyes don’t know anything but agree,
 
don’t see more than the tatty wool blanket draped across two chairs painted yellow from the kitchen. You creeping under, the size of a mouse. You looking through the brown woven fringe to the television set screen. 

You’re not here. You are

itching in prairie grass, even though little Laura Ingalls Wilder always presses every hot nerve the way she talks, the way she smiles, the way Carrie trips down the grassy hill but stands up laughing each episode each time. Every fall can’t be that funny.

You don’t really want to be any of that TV show family, and you weren’t born this way, mouse-small, but you were born into this house, lock, stock, and smoking parent. Never knew when the uneasy peace would crack. A certain kind of lost. 

When they stride out to dinner, you practice emerging. Do you even like this show? Michael Landon your father? There are twelve years to go. You’ll stay small. Reframe the image once you’re gone.