don’t make me take your sunshine away – Ciaran Short

January 6, 2026

the phrase sent a chill down my spine. authoritarian but warm, with a sing-songy cadence. the well-dressed millennial father folded his body in half to be face to face with his colorfully dressed daughter. his performative parenting consisted of shrill droning, monosyllabic sentences, and frighteningly friendly and exaggerated facial expressions. his daughter was perpetually grumpy, or at least her purposeful frown had not budged for the past five stops on the Brooklyn-bound F train. the moment the word “sunshine” left the man’s lips, though, the little girl’s world began to melt and she refused to suffer alone. i didn’t know what negotiation was taking place, but i now understood the stakes. for the duration of the train ride, the little girl had been clutching a small unidentifiable stuffed animal to her chest, Sunshine. blood-curdling shrieks were interwoven between her staccato pleas, “please (cry)… don’t (sob)… take (yell)… my (gasp)… sunshine (wail)… away (sigh).” her father responded with some moronic drivel, invoking a logic that his daughter was obviously not in a state to absorb. the battle raged on until a third party intervened. a woman sitting across from the duo, who up until this point had been completely silent, sternly exclaimed, “for christ’s sake, charley, let her keep her god damn Sunshine.” and with that, charley relented his bellicose campaign against Sunshine and all was well again.