I skim my father’s vanity-published, dictated, ghost-written memoir, as short and overcompensated as a two-block parade; the book he tried unsuccessfully to smuggle into the local library and place on their Best Sellers table; one book out of boxes full of unsold copies we found in his nursing home closet after he died, some of which we put on a side table at his funeral, but no one took. I skim through it and find a single sentence about me: that I was adopted. I don’t bother reading the rest. Now I’m just like my father, writing only about myself.
Mark Hendrickson is a poet and writer who worked for many years as a mental health technician in a locked psychiatric ward.