By MEGAN PINTO

Excerpted from “even in silence”

My father is perseverating, moving around the edges of rooms. On repeat, he asks, but how will
we pay for it? How will we pay for it? 

He follows me, my mother, then me, then my mother. Inside my childhood home, there are only
so many rooms. 

On Christmas Day, I bake a loaf of frozen bread. I feed slices to my father with my hands, then
catch each chewed up bit he pushes back out with his tongue. 

He is speaking.
I am numb.