The first time your father calls you a chicken shit
It’ll be as if you’re hearing the words for the very first time
Like G-D speaking into a corpse
Roots you’ve never felt until now
Meaning becomes existence
A creed you’ve failed to recognize
Not because you are offended
But because you’re body understands something your mind does not
That anything this man says actually means something to you
His opinion a holy statue
You’ve ignored for a long as you possibly could
Your own version of blame
A blanket of snow masking the honest of whatever lies beneath
The first time you will attempt to write a slam poem
You will think of your father
Each sentence resembles the creases of his palms
Stanzas standing like memorials in his dedication
You write each word in preparation for a battle
Forgetting is easy when you’re trying to believe in a story that your skin does not approve of
You will not thank him for using his name in such a way
To paint the ugliest pictures of a man you truly wish you could be
It will be the first and the only poem you regret ever writing
The first time you hear a poem about a kid wanting to be like his father
You will look at the metaphors like a target
Like a row of most wanted posters
You will judge that poet like a bounty
You will not realize that in the end you will wish you had wrote a poem just like that
You will wish that you had the courage to be anything but a victim
You will not know it until it is too late
The first time you sing to your father
He will not be able to give you his opinion
He will not be able to smile or lift his hands
The tubes running from his lungs
Will tell you that this is the result of waiting for so long
The rise and fall of his chest will not look like his own
It will be the quietest performance you will ever give in your life
Time will grip your bones into submission
And tell you I told you so
When he finally leaves his physical body
Everything you thought you knew will become a first
The recipes you let slip from the spaces in your fingers will gather around your feet like
Life a first fucking lesson you were too busy to hold in your mouth
Before it became too sour to bear
On Sundays you will forget that it had ever happened
You have the urge to call him
Like an addict trying to reach for the last chance of survival in broken pipes…
And nothing will ever be the same
You swear you could feel his hands wake you
Like The beginning of a brand new day
kianamaiart
blakekathryn
dailybridgerton
areudirty
germansingergirl
andulkaphoto
gummygunk
stormborns
theartofmadeline
gracieabrams
