by Angelica Roman

My father remains elusive, intangible. He has never been and may never be my father in life. He is a cypher, a ghostly figure that begins to take shape when Nina and I are fourteen, when we first see him. From then on, he emerges in many forms. He is the lawyer in the gray suit. He is the letter from the courthouse. He is the woman that stops me in the street. He is the house I have never entered. I stand at his threshold. He does not invite me in. But I invite him to inhabit my pages.

Angelica Roman is a Latina writer based in New Jersey. She studied creative writing at New Jersey City University, where she received the Walter Glospie Academy of American Poets Prize and the Kathy Potter Memorial Writing Award. Her work explores the interplay between presence, absence, and identity. Her prose has appeared in Ovunque Siamo and Quelle Presse Literary Pamphlet.