My Father’s Paper Shredder

When I was young he would always look at my things and throw them away without asking, without a shred of guilt. All the paper maché ghosts of my childhood wiped completely clean by my ever-organizing father. There’s no one quite as tidy as my father. A well-oiled machine that always obsesses over the beauty of being clean and compulsively throws everything away as is he is haunted by mischievous ghosts who compel him to do nothing but shred.

His favorite thing to do is shred paper. At night I would hear my father in his office murdering the ghosts of taxes and paperwork, always shredding the entire night away and I wonder who taught him to be clean.

I think what my father is must be beyond clean. And how is there so much to shred anyway, if he’s forever giving his whole life away scrubbing the sins of his father who never let him have things, always moving, in every new house he was just a guest.

In a newly built house there are never ghosts, yet my father was always trying to cleanse our home that has stayed forever and always meticulous and perfect, no shred of clutter or dust because my father never truly stopped putting away.

I wonder what he does when we all go away and he is alone with no one but his ghosts. I wonder if he thinks of his father with a mournful sigh. But no – he cleans my room, the foyer, finds things to shred hearing that whirling mechanical noise as always.

When I come home my father comments on how much I weigh, aghast at my thin frame as if he wasn’t the one who always taught me that to be clean was to find ways to shed.