4
Little Yellow Squares
They sit opposite each other, shoulders slumped, this father and this son. The similarities are there, if you choose to look: around the eyes, the thinness of the upper lip, the slump of the shoulders. Life has treated them both the same way, though they don’t care to admit it, to themselves or to each other.
They are in the kitchen. Around them, on walls, utensils, appliances, sit little yellow squares, as if they have been disturbed doing something they shouldn’t; they cling to whatever is nearest so as not to be noticed. The father would rather not notice them. Across each of them a single word, a lesson his son is trying to teach him. I am not an i***t, the father says when he is at his most lucid. I know, his son says, his patience thin.
They sit in silence
