On a Saturday night around 12 am I find myself lost in a haze of vibrations and hands

Pulling at my hips, while we dance

At the end of our meeting

With a name and a drink I was greeted

To which I replied, “Your sweet, but that’s not needed.”

There it is, that look of surprise

And I laugh inside, thinking if only he could see behind my eyes

He would know that

I am a 5 foot 6 dark skinned representation

Of the love my father carried in the bottom of his glass of wine.

Were I to be defined, they would call me a walking risk

Because I was raised witnessing the influence in alcohol’s kiss

I am a 5 foot 6 dark skinned representation of daddy’s little princess

All grown up

Stained with the memories of an alcoholic’s love

Don’t get me wrong I love my daddy to death

But at 8 years old he wasn’t just a man

He was my Clark Kent

Coming home stumbling over his own alcoholic breath

A big red-eyed foul-smelling giant

Making too much noise

Breaking down on the floor

Screaming, “No one loves me anymore!”

Retreating so far into his mind

He couldn’t see past blurry eyes

To the family standing right by his side

You see I love my father to death

Because he is a 6 foot 3 dark skinned representation of a man whose father never loved him, or himself.

So he took pleasure in putting his seed through hell

An angry preacher man with a book full of justifications, and misinterpretations in his hand

Feeding poison into the minds of his children

So that one day they would grow into adults who would struggle to know how to love

And would find their own ways to do so

My daddy found his in bottles of wine,

Anything that could knock out his sense of time

Please don’t misunderstand my father loved me but he hurt inside

And he carried so much there was never really room for both

So every time he hurt, he’d wake up on the floor

With a headache and a bottle of love

I am the end result

of too many morning after apologies

Princess I’m sorries

Alcohol stained lips kissing my cheek, promising me, that was the last drink

But if I were to show you my soul

You could trace the places I tried to hold

The promises he could never keep

Understand, I am a 5 foot 6 dark skinned representation

Of the love my father carried in the bottom of his glass of wine

So carefully defined I am a walking risk

I do not need or want to fall in love with alcohol’s kiss

I will never be the victim of the morning after apologies

With questions of where have I been?

I don’t want to wake up with the taste of throw up on my chin

Preparing lies

Ready to disguise

And deny the thing that I did

I will never be someone’s teenage dream

I don’t want to wake up on a couch wishing I had just stayed sober

While a man stands, zipping up his pants 10 years older

Than me, because for that night I was his PYT

But the next person who offers a drink

Won’t care to know these things

So I’ll just smile and say

No, that’s not for me.

©

A spoken word piece by Dominique Thompson.