Word Choice features original works of fiction and poetry. Read an excerpt from Amy Fusselman’s The Pharmacist’s Mate.

What is it about my dad being dead that I can’t say it enough? That I feel like My Dad Is Dead would be a good name for my son?

That I can picture myself saying, “I can’t talk right now, I have to pick My Dad Is Dead up from hockey?”

Singing, “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear My Dad Is Dead”?

I look My Dad Is Dead up on the internet and discover that there is a band with that name. And they’re from Ohio, like my dad, like me. And I can listen to their song right now, a noisy, static-y MP3 called “Don’t Look Now.”

My dad is invisible. Everything invisible is interesting to me now. Like when I sit in the apartment we just moved into, and play guitar. When I sit here and am aware, as I play and sing, that the music is invisible. And I imagine what I would look like to a deaf person. That I would look like someone opening and closing her mouth and sliding one hand along some wood and using the other to touch some strings. And how that doesn’t look like much. Just someone sitting, making little movements. Little patterns with the mouth, open close, open close, little patterns with the hand, up and down, up and down. And how the only way a deaf person would know what I was doing is because the movements are creating vibrations. And how even though the vibrations are invisible, I can feel them in the air. I can feel them, they are there, they are as there as I am.

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