I was three when my father was diagnosed with cancer. I lived through the pain of knowing he would die someday. My family and I tried to forget what was going to happen and make the most out of what time we had left. Sometimes he would say that he could see our dog - our dead dog. He said, 'I need to get to her, she wants me to follow her.' In the end, he wasn't himself anymore. One night, I was sleeping, waiting for my parents to come to my bed to say goodnight. He never came. My mom came in and woke me up, she told me that he had died. After she had told me, she left to go back to my father. I lied in bed, sobbing. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't fall asleep, and ended up crying all through the night. I will never forget that night, the night that changed my life forever. When he died, I was only seven. My friends tried to comfort me, telling me that they knew how I felt. They couldn't possibly know how I felt. The worst that had happened to them with their parents is that they had gotten a divorce. One of my best friends said that she had lost her grandfather - therefore, knowing how I felt on that day. How could she possibly know how it felt to lose my father? A father that never yelled at me, was always nice to me, always there for me.
~~~~~
Scarlett lost her father when she was seven. When she shared this with her class, it brought her, Jai, and Luke closer. Her only real friends are the Janoskians, but what happens when a (Usually it's called a love triangle.. but there are four people in it so I don't know what to call it other than this...) love square forms and she has to choose who to be with? Hearts are broken, multiple times, and what will happen when tragedy strikes, and she has no one to turn to?
~ ALL OF THE MEMORIES AND EXPERIENCES OF SCARLETT'S FATHER, ARE MY OWN. THEY ACTUALLY HAPPENED TO ME ~
FINISHED AND COMPLEATED.
Just poems, I suppose. Or maybe a scrapbook of scars. A chaotic collage of half-born stories, abandoned plots, and feelings too loud to ignore.
This isn't a novel. It's a graveyard of unwritten books- stitched together with ink and impulse. A little trauma here, a little heartbreak there. Addiction. Bad parents. Dangerous love. The usual mess.
I never claimed to be a poet, but pain has a way of teaching rhythm. And when the stories in my head refused to become chapters, they became verses instead.
My father? A ghost in flesh. A man who cradled needles more tenderly than he ever held me.
He is an addict. A lover of oblivion. And I, the daughter left behind in the smoke of his escape.
Does that make me a girl with "daddy issues"? Or just a girl still learning how not to bleed from wounds she didn't choose?
This book is for the overthinkers, the almost-authors, the ones who feel too much and write too little- until the words finally spill out like blood on the page.
Welcome to the ride. There's no exit. But there's poetry in the wreckage.
Author's Note
I didn't set out to write a book. I set out to survive my own mind.
This is what happens when you have too many stories, too many ghosts, and not enough discipline to finish a single novel. So instead, I wrote poems- or something like them. Fragments. Feelings. Flashbacks. A scrapbook of the soul.
Some of these pieces are fiction. Some are memory. Some are just what happens when you stare at the ceiling too long and let your thoughts rot into poetry.
If you've ever had a thousand ideas and no idea where to start- if you've ever felt too broken to write but too full not to- this is for you.
Thanks for riding with me. There's no map. No neat ending. Just the wreckage, and the words we make from it.