What It Was For

My father has a certificate in a language nobody here reads,

and he has never once shown it to anybody in this country.

He drove nights. He drove nights for nineteen years.

And he did the voice on the phone — the flattened one — so it would go smoother.

My mother took a job three floors below what she'd trained for

and she was the best one on that floor and everybody knew it.

And when the letter came they put it on the wall like a photograph,

and my father cried, which I had not seen, and has not happened since.

And I got in. And I was good at it. And I was good at it for years.

And I have been unhappy in a way I couldn't explain to them—

And this is what it was for!

This is what the whole of it was for!

You didn't cross an ocean so I'd sit in a good chair being miserable —

you did it so there'd be a choice at the end of it!

This is what it was for!

Not the title. Not the letter on the wall.

The choosing. The choosing was the whole of the inheritance —

so please. Please let it be what it was for.

I told them in the front room and I had it planned and I lost the plan.

My mother put her hand flat on the arm of the chair, which she does.

And nobody shouted. It would have been easier if somebody had shouted.

There was just a long quiet with about thirty years in it.

And I know exactly what it cost. I have always known what it cost.

That's the thing that nearly kept me in that chair for good—

But this is what it was for!

This is what the whole of it was for!

I'm not throwing it away — I'm spending it, which is different —

and the only way to waste it is to spend it on the wrong thing!

This is what it was for!

Not the title. Not the letter on the wall.

You bought me a decision and I'm finally making one —

so please. Please let it be what it was for.

And my father didn't speak for a long time.

Long enough that I started apologising, which he stopped with his hand.

And then he asked me one question, and it wasn't the one I'd prepared for.

He didn't say "are you sure."

He said, "What is it?"

He said, "The thing. What is it?"

And this is what it was for!

All of it — this is what it was for!

Nineteen years of nights and a certificate in a drawer

and a woman three floors under where she should have been —

so that one of us could pick!

This is what it was for!

Not the title. Not the letter on the wall.

You bought me a decision — I'm making it out loud —

and this is what it was for.

And he sat back, and he said,

"Alright.

Show me."