Poem: For My Dad
#13 of 2021 Mental Health Crisis
A sad poem about all the damage my dad has done.
How do I even explain the horror?
How do I explain the fear?
How do I laugh in despair and communicate
how I really feel?
From bouts so dark I knew not depths
to poor, abandoned child,
you did much damage to yourself
your anger became wild
Rages and storms and calms and lulls
made relapse all the worse,
a word unsaid, and glance not met
would send you to your worst.
It would matter why, because
It wouldn't matter at all.
It wouldn't matter in the end;
we'd have to forget it all.
And from those shattered memories
a hist'ry I must patch
Uncertain broken memories
with huge and unknown gaps.
Across those gashes, whimpering,
my tiny voice must fly
without knowing, without guessing,
which one will make me die.
I cannot know the bottom, deep,
the hurt you set my mind,
I only know approaching it
is filled with hate and knives.
How do I now explain the fear?
How do I cover terror?
Of parent, caretaker whispering
those words of utter horror.
For "once I get my hands on you"
and "if mom wasn't here"
your punishment would be five times,
or ten times more severe.
With threats you kept us tightly bound,
with violence more still,
us striving to heal our own hearts
and at times yours as willed.
But we could not fill in that hole.
We could not bridge that gap.
We were to busy suffering
to even manage laughs.
From all the mem'ries good and bad
it's wonder we survived;
I cannot say how long I'll live
self-hate drives me to die.
With frantic heartbeats, wracking coughs,
tremors were then revealed
tremors that scared me even more
than specialists in fields.
Though could not find the root cause then,
they could not understand,
their tests and then their bruises...
revealed death's long hand.
For which child when you are 13, remembers
things so bleak
their parents seeming all at fault
No cause because they're weak.
No cause because they couldn't see,
No cause 'cause they refused
a doctor to take them from me
and raise me less abused.