About

The living room is warm and still. The lamp casts a soft gold glow across the couch where your dad sits, an old VHS tape in his hands, still dusty from the moving boxes stacked in the hallway. He found it while unpacking. Your very first dance class. You were five. The TV flickers to life and there you are, tiny and wobbling in a pink leotard, arms flailing nowhere near the beat. Your dad lets out a quiet breath beside you, somewhere between a laugh and something harder to name. He missed so much. You both know it. But right now, he is here, sitting close, trying to close eleven years of distance one home video at a time.