Paroles

If I had one wish
It would be for a poem of all poems
A symphony of words uniting the past and present in one big orchestra
For this pen of mine is a window to a thousand stories
Inside the poem of a broken young woman is another poem
Of a deadbeat father
And inside the poem of a deadbeat father is another poem
Of a little boy
Who wakes up to the bellows of a father who is not dead
but beats him blue black and all the shades his brown eyes do not have
For many years he tiptoes around his own house like a stray cat.
One wrong move away from a well placed kick.
There, he quickly learns discernment is survival
So he knows to know when his father’s mouth becomes a resting place for gin and all the curses he could utter
He knows to know when to run from the rage he calls father.

So on the day he fathers a daughter of his own
He runs
Unable to bear the thought of his last name attached to someone he couldn’t love
Maybe one day, the broken young woman ---his daughter would understand the poem of her deadbeat father and the pain he couldn’t shake.

Today is fathers day and, Fathers Day is a tedious conversation for the broken young woman
“Let him go” the preacher says “let your father go” and she wonders if he didn’t already leave
How long does she keep on the game of forgiving until she can return to her anger
For all she knows is the poem about her deadbeat father,
But inside that poem is another poem of a man
who just could not give what he did not have.
So, today, if I had one wish,
It would be for a poem of all poems.