my father who was a butcher would come home with slabs of meat tucked under his arm tied with twine that was a stale pink. my mother would avoid kissing him until he cornered her against the kitchen sink and she had no choice but to press her lips tightly together into a grimace that wished he would die. he would then turn and find me in the dining room doing my homework and place his thick but impossibly tender hands on my shoulders and lean on me the weight that his hips like tree barrels upheld the entire day. my sister yelped when his head suddenly filled the space above the bassinet and he laughed plumes of the cigar he just smoked outside before coming into our apartment. every night was like this save for the weekends when he took us to coney island, riding the train and i stared out the window at other apartment buildings that looked harsher than ours. he always forced me onto rides that turned me green and slapped me on the back laughing whenever i threw up between vendors selling hotdogs and cheap rubber souvenirs. these were the things i thought of as we buried him, the funeral home ushers pushing a waterfall of flowers off beneath the casket and men much bigger than him in construction boots lowered the corpse into the soft wet earth.