I see myself in the portrait. Not how I look, but how I feel. How I feel I should look but don’t.

Can’t.

Yet, this picture feels more accurate than looking into any mirror.

My son screamed when he came bursting out of the womb. His naked body glistened. Dollops of pinks, reds, browns, and yellows. Unblemished skin covered in bodily fluids and mucus. The doctor said it was his way of announcing himself to the world. I disagree. I think he was confused, in shock. He too could make this thing called noise. This phenomenon he’d been listening to for the last few months, albeit distorted in the chamber of his mother.

“He’s got a good set of lungs,” the midwife remarked.

He continued to make this fantastic noise as the nurse laid him on the table and struggled to clean his wriggling body. Stubby limbs flailing about in the resistanceless air. He heard a familiar voice, my voice, and the scream subsided. It was over.

After all these years, all the attempts I’ve made, I’m still unable to produce the primeval scream I witnessed that day.

I strive to reach this state of expression. A polar contrast to me, wooden, as unmoved as a tree, standing in a gallery like still life.

Why don’t I just go for it, let loose, give off a howl? That’d add salt to the occasion.

“Are you done looking, dad?” My son calls from the foyer. “C’mon, let’s go.”

I follow him out the door.

Nick Fairclough is a writer on the cusp. His stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions. He’s been shortlisted and longlisted but he’s not quite there, not yet. He lives in Aotearoa New Zealand with his family. https://nickfairclough.wordpress.com/