It is a sunny morning in mid June when Copper sits down and tries to articulate his thoughts about his father. This is not the first time, and it will not be the last. 

To be exact, it is June 15. Outside, the sun ladles warm golden light onto his desk, thick and syrupy, pouring over his fingers and seeping into his desk. As of late; time slips between his fingers like running water, contorting and coalescing into an amalgamation of vague memories. The only thing that keeps him tethered to a sense of time is the knowledge that it’s somewhere between spring and summer, too early for the dry desolate heat to begin beating down upon the city, but late enough that the novel vividness of spring has long faded away. What he’s left with is a sort of lackluster in between, and he thinks that everyone else can feel it too - the awkward limbo of in-betweens and halfway points, the slow transformation as something becomes nothing.

He moves to put his pen down on the paper, then stops. The other customary Father’s Day traditions have already been done - flowers sent to his door, painstakingly arranged, chocolates, in all the flavors that Jay hates, and an extravagant gift, designed to be as helpful and as scathing as possible. All that’s left is this.

It would be too easy to say that he hates his father. It would be too difficult to write down the truth. The halfway point that would be acceptable to write down escapes him.

In the end, all he writes down is:  I am my fathers son.

Acceptable. Inoffensive. Plain. Just barely scratching the surface of the truth. 

He slips it into a locked drawer filled with all the other half truths about his father. The most recent addition to his collection settles on top without a sound.

He tilts himself over the bathroom counter, leaning closer to the mirror. He examines his face studiously, taking note of the structure, the eye shape, the proportions of his face, the shape of it. 

The result is the same every time; he pulls away from the mirror with a sour taste in his mouth. Jay stares back at him, wearing his mothers eyes. Cooper's face is not his own - it is his fathers, and the last remnants of their relationship is plastered on his face like a warning. 

Here is the truth, undeniable, staring back at him from the mirror. Cooper cannot hate his father, or, at least, he cannot hate him as much as he hates himself. And Cooper cannot afford to hate himself, not in a world where every hesitation and every doubt is pounced upon like predator to prey. Their similarities are etched into bones and flesh, and Cooper can scream and cry and fight against it all he wants, but what it comes back to is this; his father’s face, wearing his mother’s eyes.