That Instant

you realize yourself and your father probably would have been very good friends had you been born by another and met off hand on Staten Island, age difference accounted for.  Enough in common and enough apart to be able to enjoy one another and argue happily til the sun went down and jog and spar and spit at one another and open doors and windows by force and hear voices til the sun came up.

You realize your birth cramped his style as much as his efforts to raise you cramped your own and you understand everything happened too close and too cramped.

And you realize there is still furious anger and distilled righteousness in both veins and arteries to ever get to a place where you can see him without having to move ten feet away to not attempt to tear his esophagus out of his throat with your fingernails.