January.
I wonder how long it took you to forget you had a daughter.
To forget you were a man, to forget you had a backbone. Bones stacked in closet, I brought them back.
Did you forget you created a stronger one. A woman one.
Man with no reason.
This shit gets tiring, same storyline, different characters, fucked up endings. Let me start from the beginning.
I remember, always being asked why I was the darkest child of five, whose face resembled a woman’s scorn, momma stop reminding me you were young and in love, stop reminding me you didn’t know what he had going on behind your delicate back, this one is strong, I love you regardless of your strawberry swing memories turned bitter you are still sweet to me.
Walking pass my grandmother’s house for three years unknowingly, I wonder could you see my broken footsteps in the winter that outlined a size six shoe that you didn’t help me walk in for 19 years, I’m 19 now and you still haven’t discovered what helps you stand without falling on your concrete face.
Your face resembles something I would never touch…
Like dirt
Or trust,
Like dead beats with community dick.
I am not your kid. You call me… Ms. Morgan.
I remember, waking up and running to an enclosed bathroom, crying over a man who played my second father, his name be red, red-hearted, blood shot eyes, every time he come by…
Like blood smeared on insecure sheets
Like body given up on the 16th, of May, I became one of those girls.
And you were still nowhere to be found, I lost myself.
And when I found out who you were and what you were, I should’ve missed that moment like mama’s period when she discovered a growing backbone in stomach.
I was a big sister of four, but we look shit alike.
Black sheep in a room full of white wolves and where tails stuck between fragile legs, you blended in with your shadow on a wall with not even a hi seeping from cracked lips.
You reminded me of something I wouldn’t touch, like your daughters.
Whose eyes wandered over my 5’2” body in curiosity.
Or something I wouldn’t trust,
like your “let’s keep bones in the closet” wife, who had so much to say about me not being your child, but quiet when I walk in…
like your footsteps walking into my hospital room where I was brought into this world…
funny you weren’t there, but y’all ass still quiet.
You reached out too late.
I’m woman, something you should’ve been.
You deserve no backbone, these bones in the closet came out, you have four daughters, I am not your child, more like the backbone you still wish for.
Those four girls whose hearts smile when they see you, don’t know you like they should, I’ve been out the picture you tried to repaint for years, you sent them with paint brushes and Crayola to make family portrait when I have already master pieced myself.
I am not your child, listen to your wife, she’s right about something.
I don’t want to be your child no more than she wants me to be, but this backbone is keeping you from falling on the face that can’t seem to look me in mine when placed in the same room for almost ten hours.
You remind of things I could never believe in,
Like hole in hearts come winter
Like calling someone daddy who didn’t belong to me for the rest of my life
Like lies that contorted your body having back become bent each time you look down at your fragile skin…
You questioned if I was your child, but quick to get the answer tattooed on you.
This is no dear dad poem.
This is no “If I had something to say to you, it would be this...” type poem.
This… is a question of your manhood.
Hiding behind wife, that kept you from your child, I am 20 now.
And heart has become as cold as hospital room on January morning where you did not believe in things
Like Daughters
Like Backbones
Like I could make it without a father
Or trust
Like strawberry swings turning bittersweet
Like the mother of your child
Like your conscious
I wonder if your backbone broke when you looked into my mother’s eyes and questioned me.
I wonder if you noticed I have been reconstructing it for some time now.
But, I wonder how long it took you to realize you had a daughter, who doesn’t want to be.