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Moving Forward: A Poem

Moving Forward: A Poem

The day my dad died

I was dancing barefoot in the sprinklers

That spilled over onto

The San Antonio riverwalk's pavement.

My laugh was loud and obnoxious

And my feet were wet and pruning,

And for the first time in my 22 years,

I did not have the memory of

My father sighing:

Ca-line, what are you doing?

With that concerned hitch in

The middle of my name.

The same hitch as when I was nine,

And I watched as my birthday pancake he made me

Flopped on the floor with a pathetic splat.

The same as he did when I was sixteen,

And he yelled at me in the school parking lot

For expressing thoughts through journal entries

On a public website.

Ca-line.

The same as when he told me at eighteen

That I would never make it in college,

And for the first time in my life

I hung up on him.

The same as our last phone call at twenty,

Christmas eve,

And I realized I never would've heard

That damn hitch in my name

If it weren't for a threat from

A wealthy family member.

Why didn't I hear the phone ring?

The day my dad died

I was dancing barefoot in the sprinklers

That spilled over onto

The San Antonio riverwalk's pavement.

My laugh was loud and obnoxious

And my feet were wet and pruning,

And for the first time in my 22 years,

I did not think of him.