Mathieu Parsy
You wake with a stitched crescent on your lower abdomen and a new part inside you, a quiet pulse you cannot feel but trust. The doctors say successful. They say numbers. They say go live.
Your father sits by the bed and smiles the way he does when he has solved something. When you were small he fixed the sink himself, spread the pipes like a puzzle on the tile floor, refused the plumber. He tells the nurse, I gave her my kidney, and the nurse says how generous, and your father says it was nothing. Later he says it again to you, softer. It was nothing. You nod because nodding does not hurt.
You learn what you can do now. Drink water without counting. Walk until your calves burn and then keep walking. Buy a ticket without a return date. The first time you board a plane alone, you lay your palm against the oval window and feel the engine’s tremor. You send him photos of mountains, of oceans, of a small plane wing cutting cloud. He replies with thumbs up and reminders. That flight is possible because of me. That swim. That breath.
At home your mother labels containers. Low sodium. Take with food. Your father labels time. Before my kidney. After my kidney. He keeps a ledger in his head and recites it aloud.
At your birthday he lifts his shirt just enough to show the scar. A closed eye at his side. Worth it, he says to the room. I didn’t hesitate. Someone claps him on the back. Someone calls him a hero. He waves them off, pleased. Then he catches your gaze across the cake and holds it a beat too long, as if waiting for something. You smile. You cut the cake.
He asks if you are grateful today. You say yes because gratitude is a small word, easy to hand over. He says it is not gratitude he wants, it is acknowledgment. He says a gift like this changes ownership. He laughs when he says it. You laugh too because laughter is cheaper than argument.
You travel anyway. You stand in a market where fruit sweats in the sun and you buy a peach and bite into it. Juice runs down your wrist. You think of him running laps at dawn. You think of yourself carrying him inside you, how you cannot set him down. You text a photo of the peach pit. He writes, Enjoy what I gave you.
At night you press a hand to your abdomen and feel the steady insistence. Still, when you make plans, you hear his voice approving or withholding. Still, when you are strong, you feel watched.
One morning you forget to call. You wait for the familiar tightening, the sense of something revoked. Nothing happens. The kidney works. The sun comes up.
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Mathieu Parsy is a Canadian writer who grew up on the French Riviera. He now lives in Toronto and works in the travel industry. His writing has appeared or is upcoming in publications such as The Offing, Peatsmoke, Flash Frog, andJMWW. Follow him on Instagram at @mathieu_parsy.