There is a pool of lava in my stomach that comes out in violent spews, but the words solidify to igneous formations the second they come out of my mouth and in contact with the air. Instantly, the sentiment becomes too heavy to be typed out or uttered. I lack the strength, actually more like the constitution, to lug them to where they need to go. So there they sit, another little knick-knack of forgotten history to collect dust on my shelf. 

Most of the time I feel like a girl in a nearly 30-year-old body, but when the question of my father comes up now I feel like a boiling pot. The screams inside come out like the whistle of a kettle left unattended on the stove. Tar fills my intestines now, not just my lungs. It’s not the kind from cigarettes, it’s pitch and all it wants is to be dropped down the battlements together with feathers. War tar. Ward off the intruders who came into my home and disturbed my well-laid, well-known plans. Every so often, but often when everything feels almost right, it hits. It burns, then cools, then burns again.

There is no regularity to this emotional seismology. The ground is unstable on the isle of elective isolation. Too often, the tides shift between whether this is a choice I made or a choice made for me. With each ebb and flow, my resolve is chiseled away, and then more resentment gets deposited. In the aisles of grocery stores, the smiling face of Tony the Tiger reminds me of times of familial comfort and I am flattened by grief. Things aren't grrrrrrreat.

As a self-imposed orphan, there are new rules that I constantly discover and new taboos to navigate. To what degree of familial relation does my stomach acid churn? The other day my grandmother, whose Christmas and New Year's messages I wholly ignored, sent another social media olive branch to let me know her sister had died. Actually, to be more clear, it wasn't an olive branch as this chasm that has grown has nothing to do with her. It was just a grandmother reaching out to her granddaughter in a moment of her own grief. She said that at some point I had given some social media reaction to something or another she had posted, which she said gave her great comfort. I have no recollection of this at all. Likely, phone in hand as I listened to lectures while falling asleep, phone screen set to perennially glow as I find the blue light to be a comfort at night, a slip of the finger caused the unintentional act that brought my grandmother so much solace. My voicebox, my through, my heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys have all sunk down to my ankles. The lava pool is now an endless pit. 

Quickly, without opening her message, I archived the chat.