Published by: Faith Villaluna
Date Published: June 27, 2023
Time Published: 7:39 AM
Category: Poetry
Theme: The Unspoken Wounds and the Projection of Unresolved Emotional Trauma
To dad,
When you died,
It gave me peace.
I did not shed a tear,
And I prayed that someone cried for you.
The sweet pain of it all,
You were buried,
It took me four weeks.
𝘍𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘬𝘴
Four weeks to forget your face
And four weeks to think about the process
Of cutting myself inside out,
To take out your shards
And place my anger somewhere.
But it always comes back with a vengeance,
Grabs hold of me like a child
My childhood... I was a child.
Look at me,
D-dad?
Don't you feel sorry for me dad?
Do I even have a home—dad?
I was so small, so helpless, so innocent
Wondering if heaven is clean,
And if the houses were three story manmade hills.
Can I be honest?
That,
Sometimes I wish I wasn't born this way.
When you—"my father,"
Told me to,
Act like a man?
To be a man?
Seriously dad?
𝘚𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘐 𝘣𝘦 𝘰𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥?
Dad,
I think you owe me an apology,
Apologize dad,
𝘈𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘪𝘻𝘦!
Does it hurt?
That,
You refused to call-even text-
Me—
Your own, only son, to apologize
for never being there?
Dad can't you see?
I'm bleeding on paper, again,
Can you just disappear completely?
And the ash of your cigarette,
Grows so long it begins to chasm and bend.
𝘚𝘮𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘺.
The ineffable pleasure and the camaraderie,
Shoehorned and unwarranted.
Did you know dad,
That,
I always hated you.
When I was young, I told you
𝘐 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶.
And I made myself believe that.
But deep down, there was this burning resentment
That I couldn't get rid of.
I loved my mother,
But hated her for bringing a child into the world
With a man like you.
My whole life I was trained to deny myself,
And I never knew what it meant to be seen.
I'm not who you want me to be, dad
And I just need to say I can't pretend anymore,
Dad.
It's like my beauty is a cage;
A slave to itself.
That turned me into something,
That turned into something,
That turned into nothing.
But,
Did you know that,
I died in that house,
And no one saw it.
No one was there when you ripped the innocence from my skin.
They don't see the corpse of their son
Because, after all,
dead things don't speak.
𝘥𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘬...
They don't see me,
They only see what they want to see.
How long until they see their son is dead?
Will they host a funeral?
Will you host a funeral, dad?
Or will you let me wither where I last stood in that house?
Now, I'm a monster
Now, I'm a freak
Now, I'm an abomination
But all I wanted to be, was a kid.
Hungry for dinner on my mother's blouse,
And yeah,
I did feel guilty for cursing at my mother one time.
Asking God, what
She did to deserve a son
So undeserving.
But—still,
Even if you were a God of those who kill women
And I, that you cut open
Inhaling neglect, politics, existence;
We exhale pain the same way dad.
A solemn acknowledgement of the underwhelming everything,
And overwhelming nothing of it all.
Mother!
I have always been godless.
And I want to believe in god,
Though,
I don't want for wanting
No,
The sinner in me is envious of those who are God fearing.
Well,
At least they have a God—
Does my father have a God?
Do you have a God, dad?
Perhaps you don't...
When you screamed at me while throwing shampoo battles, shoes, and a hairbrush at my head.
And pushed me into the wall outside the house while screaming in my face.
Where I stood outside of your house screaming,
And barking up at the asbestos paneling,
Hoping you would open the front door.
And the lights were off,
Where the neighbors didn't hear us,
Because we lived on twelve acres of cracked earth and wilted vegetation.
Where I sat outside hovering in the rain;
And the mud and the sweltering heat of the summer.
And when the fireflies are the only source of light,
where the cicadas crawled inside of my ears
And lived there for months.
And I swear—
I still hear their drones everyday,
Even when I sit out there on your porch
In the dead of winter.
God,
I think—I wish, at least,
That there was a God like mom says there is,
Like she always does when someone dies.
Over and over, I say your name
In vain, in vain, it's all in vain.
Testing, then screaming, at holy waters
Throw me down on some sacrificial altar
—Put the fear of you in me,
Still you evade me,
Never mind to persuade me.
Unknown, Unproven, Unseen
If I could have believed
-Who would I be?-
Weightless with faith passed down to me?
Singing hymns, confessing my sins?
Without proof, to just believe in religion, in me, in anything...
-God, is that what it's like to be free?-
And anyways—
I think,
Maybe this is for the best.
He was always a terrible dad.
And I sometimes think of things that weren't,
but might have been.
Like history without the face of my father
So cruel,
Oh, father!
𝘔𝘺 𝘧𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳?
You don't even deserve that title!
And because of that title,
I still have to wake up everyday and have to love you,
Or at least pretend to.
And,
I don't think that is even close to fair,
Why should I have to love someone whose presence felt like a burden to my own mother?
My mother—his own wife
Your arm that wants to grab me,
And it seems like it wants to stab me.
You were too hard on me and then,
Suddenly nice
Some days (most days),
And too close for comfort the next.
My dad is like,
The men who say God loves women.
(These are the things we don't talk about)
But,
I wish God could hear me;
That I never wanted to be your son.
Maybe then you would know,
How much I want to find my way home.
And,
How othering it must be to survive and thrive without care and attention.
Will the day come when it all makes sense?
The day when I'll be on the greener side of the fence.
The day when you'll show there was no pretense.
God,
Call me your child and tell me I am forgiven—please,
I'm a witness of your creation!
I want to walk into one of those churches,
To kneel in front of the altar,
Distended with candles.
And I want to recite my lusty thoughts to the hunger rector.
I want him to receive my swollen sins
And,
Whatever was wrong with your head crawled out
And entered mine.
A worm to wriggle in my cerebellum,
And gnaw at the happiness.
And yeah, it has been six years since I last saw your body.
Alive, that is.
I knew you were dying,
That is why I do not need to see the decay.
To know you are really,
Really,
Really,
𝘎𝘰𝘯𝘦.
But then,
The crows will be upset,
They will tell God about you.
And,
God may forgive you but I never will.
𝘕𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳...
IMAGE SOURCE:
https://greg.org/archive/2018/03/26/i-see-dead-people-3.html?fbclid=IwAR2HiROtIdPwY9VxxH-6dag0tWXR1upb6nVFmXBXdMZck_WQwrsXl6tXqPw
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