Budweiser
Tessa Roberts
My dad used to kneel into the carpet,
sinking among
the action figures — limbs cocked, faces mid-scream —
each one left in the pose he’d abandoned it last.
He always picked the same one,
the one with the head
that snapped off clean, the socket worn smooth
from repetition, like it had been made for dying.
He moved the others
stiffly, pushed them across the meat
of his thigh in formations —
a funeral march
masquerading as war.
Then it would happen —
that pop, sharp as a knuckle cracking,
and he’d say it.
“Budweiser’s dead again.”
The head would roll
into shadow. The body
laid flat, as if waiting
for instruction
or forgiveness.
He’d stare through it,
through all of it —
past plastic, past carpet, past me —
like he was listening
for something beneath the floorboards.
Then he’d disappear.
Days. Weeks.
The figures left frozen —
one arm raised too late,
one leg hovering,
never landing.
And then —
he’d come back.
Say nothing.