Not My Father by Jai
	It was a stranger, and I felt nothing for him. It was not my father I watched Father. He was talking animatedly to the man across from him, over the chessboard and a cup of coffee. I wasn't sure what I felt for Father. He was Father, of course, but I didn't feel as much for him as I thought a child ought to. How should a child feel for their Father? He was showing me off. I knew it, and I didn't say anything. I was used to it. Father always showed me off, and that was how it was. Father who showed me off, and often wanted me to be better at what I did so he could continue to get praise for me. Then I turned, staring at my own coffee, at its black swirling depths. My father was gone. It was better. He was not who he had seemed. He had been a bad man, and I had not known it. But what 11 year old does? What 12 year old does? What child does not love their father simply because he is their father, and doesn't question him? I strangely felt nothing for my father. Even now, I was quick to say I had no father, and reluctant to consider him as such. I had turned cold against him, on the fateful day I was awakened to reality. I remembered it in my faint, mostly told mental pictures. He had tried to kill us, they said. I had thrown my sucker at him. It was not my father standing outside the car window, who had just broken it, and was trying to strangle my mother. It was not my father who drove off in a rage when he was stopped, and who I have not seen after that. It was a stranger, and I felt nothing for him. And I grew years older in that instant.