Waterfall

By Thom Ensign

At some point, Stephen started cracking his knuckles in the shower: his fingers, wrists, even his neck. He did this in a specific rhythm, one he spontaneously performed once when he was 14 during a family vacation in Orlando. He remembered these details exactly because the nasty habit caused his father to strike him as Mickey Mouse paraded down Main Street.

Decades later, Stephen made this rhythm a ritual. He surrendered to the waterfall as it held him and kept the tears secret. And he remembered his father, and how he had loved him and hated him at the same time.