And again.
My father stood still for a long moment.
And in that low resolution, that grainy, smeared, barely-there image, I saw it. superman 240p
Then he saw me.
He pulled me into a hug. The little boy’s cape crumpled between them. My mother was laughing now, a sound I had forgotten—bright and unburdened, from a time before the fights, before the silences, before the cancer. And again
He looked tired. Not the gentle exhaustion of a good day’s work. Something deeper. The kind of tired that comes from a second shift at the garage, from a mortgage that eats more than you earn, from a wife who cries in the bathroom when she thinks you can’t hear. The kind of tired that makes a man wonder, just for a second, if his son’s red towel is the closest thing to heroism this family will ever produce.
He dropped the box into the can. The sound was a dull, heavy thud, even through the laptop’s cheap speakers. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. Then he saw me
The video ended.