Late-night bite

Cast in the light of the open fridge, Marcus had to grasp its door when a memory rose from nowhere and roiled him like a sea swell.

There, inside the woodshed, framed by its doorway, was his father, crying in heaving sobs.

An unfathomable sight.

Sensing a presence, his father turned to see him, his face a rictus, and Marcus blushed as if caught in a scandal.

Wordlessly, his father closed the woodshed door. The incident was never acknowledged. And so it faded from Marcus’s memory until a hankering for leftovers many decades later flushed his cheeks all over again.

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