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Photo courtesy of Gratisography

The man at the table is wearing my father’s arm. He’s sipping coffee in a mall food court, hundreds of kilometres away from my actual father, but this man has the same slipstream of wiry hair over pale skin that’s coated in enough sunspots to look permanently tanned. Ghostly speckles punctuate places where the dermatologist has burned off malignancies. This near-father wears an off-brand Tilley hat, adjusting the brim with swollen fingers. Heavy use and osteoarthritis. Later, a different man crosses the parking lot in my father’s belted khaki shorts and checked button-down, his legs too skinny under his paunch. Birkenstocks and socks. Again, that same Tilley hat. The other day I woke up from a dream that my father had died and a word rolled around in my head. I don’t know what these knock-off fathers portend. If it’s training me for the gasp of recognition once he’s gone. Or if it’s telling me to pay attention, to better differentiate the one that’s mine.