i just started writing this tonight, so it's not perfect, but i just don't want to get started in on a story that's not even good. any constructive criticism is appreciated!


Some say that the call of the loon is one of the most haunting and quieting sounds known to man.

I used to hear that call every summer, sitting there on the back porch with my father, watching the sun rise and fall with each day's beginning and end. But when night fell, casting a great shadow on our little portion of the earth, my father and I never failed to stay outside and wait for those calls. I knew each of them by heart... knew their names and their meanings. I knew that the loon's call was far from melancholy, all because of my father, the science geek.
But even though I often teased him for being so intelligent about those kinds of things, in my heart I wanted nothing more than to be just like him. I loved that he knew the answers to my incessant questions... loved that he knew exactly where the constellations of Andromeda, Draco and Cassiopeia were in the starry skies. Most of all, I loved that my father loved so much. I used to wonder if he had used up every little space in his heart for all of the things he loved. I worried for him, actually. Worried that one day he would find something special that he wanted to love but couldn't, because there was no room left in his heart for it. But I was a child, and trivial things like these didn't seem so trivial back then. In fact, somehow they seemed important.
My father and I cherished our time together when I was that young, but soon other things got in the way. I had other friends to hang out with, homework to get a start on, and a job that took up far too much of my time. Those things I once considered so crucial to my existence became unimportant to me, or at least less important than everything else. I forgot how much my father had taught me back then when I was willing to take the time to learn it. I thought that those lessons - those lessons that couldn't be taught anywhere else but outside on the back porch with my dad - could wait for me. I thought that everything could just pause, giving me time to catch up...
That's why it was such a shock when my father died. Nobody expected it; it just happened. He died on the back porch one night, while I was at the movies with my friends. My mother worked the 3 to 11 shift at the nursing home so I was the one to find him. I was 17.

That night was a night that would forever remain in my memory. It was horrifying and left me feeling every spec of guilt I could gather up. And no matter how hard I tried to block out the image of him sitting on the porch swing where we always had, all the life drained out of him... I knew that I would never be able to. Life, as a whole, would never feel the same to me after that indescribable night. I would never laugh the same, never cry the same, never feel scared like I had that night.

When I was a child, the loon's call soothed my soul. But ever since I heard it on the night of my best friend's - my father's - death, the loon's call has never seemed so melancholy.