The doorframe was a gun.
He pulled the trigger as he walked through it.
The bullet went clean through our hearts.
I have never seen anyone drive away so quickly.
My mom frantically searches for an explanation because you left without one.
I was three years old when I had a mommy and a father.
No longer did I call you my parents.
Tears soaking my face, he mistook it for hunger.
"I don't love you anymore." were the five words branded on the inside of my mother's eyelids.
She is too tired to sleep.
Her sight glued to emptiness as she lay on the air mattress of our living room floor, never refilling it with air.
The depression had paralyzed her fingertips.
I was three years old when I saw my mother cry for a month straight.
Seven months had gone by when I became a big sister.
The divorce was not even finalized.
But, I suppose my father was eager to be busy in bed, no longer having to pretend he was busy as work.
Fourteen years of one girl after another, as if my mother hadn't cried enough.
I was four when my father remarried.
She wanted me to call her "mommy."
You are the mother to my sister, but not to your husband's mistake.
I visited hell every other weekend with the predictable pattern of me babysitting, her sleeping, him drinking, and a house filled with deafening silence.
Days became short but the nights felt like years.
I was five when I became a big sister of two.
I felt like an unwanted guest in my own home.
Years passed on.
I grew into an extreme anxiety disorder and my sisters into daddy's little angels.
They are beautiful, talented, young women.
I, the overweight pre-teen with health problems and an ever growing list of documented panic attacks.
I was nine when I joined the basketball team in attempt of acceptence
With exaggerated excitement I broadcast the news to an audience of none.
A pat on the back and an emotionless "cool" was my applause.
My father attended one game.
Spitting out rage at my amateur playing.
I never joined a sports team again.
I was eleven when I had, had enough.
A whole year of crying myself to sleep, scheduled arguments, and what seemed like endless misery.
Finally, my father agreed to end overnight visitations.
He says I never talk to him but the truth is, he just doesn't remember.
How I feel is the anesthesia before the procedure.
I pick and I poke and I prod but nothing seems to work.
I stitch him up with my tears and send him to the recovery room.
Listening to my words, refusing to hear them.
My father's family repeat the same fed line, "Your father misses you."
No, he misses his consequence free drinking sessions.
I am tired of the unnecessary guilt my "family" burdens me with.
I am the invisible daughter, the sister in progress, and fighting teenager.
I am now fifteen years old and I am STILL not good enough.
