The first time you ever said you were proud of me
Was after I was slapped in the face in the midst of polite company
Smacked on the lips - a sucker punch kiss of cruelty
From her lips she dripped a poison that, even still, might get the best of me
And she looked at me, and she said that she saw - nothing.
Not a goddamn thing that was worthwhile to anyone or anything
And the doctor looked me up and down and she clicked her tongue
And said surely ma'am there's surely gotta be something
And that bitch of a sham mother looked through me and doubled down
She dug in her stubborn faux leather suburban stilettos
and carved my name on the tombstone
Chiseled me down like rusted iron on the graveyard sign
Withering away but tryin its damnedest to fade away with its dignity
She cut me to the bone. just another signpost into my home
The hell of the filth she made me make my poor unfortunate soul
And I sat there.
motionless.
Frozen in that space on the doctor's couch
Studying patterns in the carpet
Memorizing the feeling of the upholstery
I can still tell you the blue of her walls
And the beige of the sweaters
And the pinks and the soothing colours
I can still smell the subtle febreeze
And I can tell you how often I visit
As another specter still haunted and haunting me
And I can tell you how she Loved it -
How she loved with her crooked twisted heart
The power she held over me
My soul on her broken Ferris wheel
And she spun it further down and down —
-
But this is the story of when I knew you loved me
And this is out of order for how it goes usually -
Because after your wife spat on my scars
And insisted on the whole room letting her have her way with me
We all went home - what home for me !- and I memorized the streetlamps
On the streets I watched and patterned quilted in dulled memory
But before she went on her tirade,
The thing that made her do me dirty, was how you washed me clean
Because you looked at me, same question posed by the doctor
And you looked at me like you actually wanted me
And that was different.
Different and better than I usually knew
From you.
Maybe you knew too
Bravely broke your silence
Took off your own scrutiny -
Because you told the doctor you saw yourself on my face
And in my words and my composure and my temper and my brains
And my humor and my flaws and my need to be alone and need to never ever be without company -
And you said you Loved what you saw.
And that was new for you.
Truly, cross my little heart, It was more New for me.
And even More, you said you loved to watch the way I grew
And knew and fought, with broken bones, for better things
Scrappers, you and I, we've always been, its in our blood
It's the story past through catacombs of our family
And you loved to give me a "nudge", a gentle hand, a guide
To just change a little on the approach - on the stance, on the swing -
You loved to do that for me.
Thats what you told the doctor, before I had to freeze.
It was so subtle, or bulldozed through, more like,
That I never even knew you ever even looked at me -
And that's how you parented me.
That was how you were a father to me.
And it wasn't the holy buffer, the perfect wall
inpenetrable kingdom from the evil that would come
But it kept me warm, enough.
A spark that kept on burning
Even when the shit seemed like it would
Be the end of me
And I would truly never be
worth the effort, Just like she told the doctor,
Never worth, anything.
Thats the voice that rings in my ears and in my nightmares she never screams.
She doesn't need to, her voice is confident and quiet and measured when she tells the room I'm unworthy.
But you steered the courser from the crows nest
Thirty thousand feet above
Or twenty thousand leagues below the sea -
And you kept me from running ashore on her ice -
The glacier pace won't ground me and keep me from moving
to my new shore,
My new world, my new sea
You were my anchor, pop - wish you came sooner!
Wish you stood up to her like my hero
How much sooner, how much more could I be?
But a decommissioned lighthouse still stands strong against the breaker waves
And faded paint still glows a Spark - and that was Enough for me.
YOU ARE READING
DECOMMISSION // forging on foreign tides // building new legacies
Poetrya poem about a family therapy session i had when i was 12.