Inklings 2022

Her and Her’s dad to be quarantined on the couch (and only the couch) together. Without his computer. Luckily, Her’s dad had left the remote on the couch from a time when he wasn’t so swamped with work. He could actually relax, so they began to watch movies. Her’s dad was so not used to doing something that didn’t involve pla- cating an annoyed client on the phone or typing out long emails that he barely had the attention span to get through a movie. As quarantine stretched on, Her’s dad relearned the ability to stay awake during some- thing that wasn’t work-related. Her found it odd sitting on a couch with this man who was supposed to be one of the few people she knew best; despite being in her later teenage years, Her barely even knew what kind of movies he enjoyed watching. She didn’t know whether he (and there- fore Her) was predisposed to any weird diseases or whether he liked falafel or not. Falafel was one of Her’s favorite foods. Besides weightlift- ing, Her tended to do a lot of cooking (pre-quarantine, of course) because only Her knew what she needed to eat to feel energized for the next day’s workout. Her’s father seemed to survive by photosynthesizing the light from his computer screen, so he didn’t see very much use in cooking or food at all. Her found it ridiculous that she had been in an entire third of her father’s life and neither of them made much of an effort with each other. Her de - cided she would change that. “Hey, uh, Dad? You got any weird diseases I should know about?” It was a start. A House Divided Denise Suarez