Cosecha

Even my father is worried.

Openly voicing concerns; voice tight and pensive.

It reads alien to my ear.

Distinct from the boisterous, bellocose man whose speech was a bombardment of energy and expletives.

Even my father is worried.

The bravado and machismo that cast a long shadow over childhood and adolescence, and was a source of misery for defining what it was to be a man, now replaced with an acceptance of powerlessness.

"I see them looking at me. They look at me differently."

Even my father is worried.

A sense of powerlessness that once would explode in poisonous, noxious releases of anger and rage toward those nearest,

now

nothing more than a quiet murmur of resignation,

"I keep my head down."

Even my father is worried.