A Collection of Short Stories and Poems

Mirrors

My Father is

A broken man,

shattered like the

Glossy shards of a

Dropped mirror,

And terrified the

Creepy-crawly legs

Of abandonment will

Ensnare him

All over again

Like the spiders

He so mercilessly

Despises.

His insides are jumbled up

Like a mound of spaghetti

On a child's plate.

He's terrified --

He's scared of facing

That ugly monster

Of divorce

Driven into the

Heart of family.

He desperately labours

Every Friday he's earned off

To provide for the

Dwindling spool of thread

His family's degraded

Into in order to

Pick up the slack

That woman left for him

The day she let him go

Like a child blowing

A wish into a dandelion.

I desire

The day he can

Genuinely be jovial again --

For the day he won't have

To stand in front of the

Broken mirror he

Transcended into

And paint on his

Manufactured simper

Like the porcelain dollies

I used to cherish.

I hope that

One day he won't

Apologise for crying

Into my golden locks

Because they look

So much like

That women who

Abandoned him so easily

The year our dog and his mother

Almost died

As if he was nothing to her,

As if she left me here

Just to torture this man.

I pray that

One day he won't

Fear that everyone he's

Ever loved will leave him

Just as she did --

That he will not doubt me

When I tell him how

Much I will ache

When I must go off to

College and offer him

One less bird in his

Decaying nest.

He's terrified --

He's so, so terrified --

Of the day I will

Leave just as she did.

He cries into the

Darkness when

He thinks I cannot hear

While I look up to the

Stars glued to my ceiling

Thinking "How could someone

Destroy a man as perfect as this one

So effortlessly?"

How could my mother

Break someone she loved

Like a lioness stepping upon

The throat of an

Antelope that still

Denies it will die today?