Ap English 122 Poem by imani halley

Ap English 122



Imani Halley
AP English 11
12/8/14
Hamilton

I just want you to know
It's not that i dont love you. its the sound i heard when i was 6 and he slammed the front door so hard i swear to god it shook the whole house. For the next 4 years until you came i watched my mother break her teeth on vodka bottles. I never believed she truly got over him. When he left he took a part of her you and i never got to know. Im sorry i keep writing him into poetry like you arent enough of a father. its just that i always wanted someone to arrange all my broken pieces into a stain glassed window. Though he's the cause of my fragmented being i always wanted him to fall in love with my colors and and hang me up in the kitchen with paintings his mother loved. At age 15 i again learned to reserve 2 AM for sleeping. He passed away on a thursday. You know what the truth is he's a stranger to me. No man has yet to write the book of etuiqette setting out the steps for a deathbed reproachment between abandoned chhild and parent. I mean i always knew i had one of the; a father of course. i just didnt know what he looked like or where he was. i didnt know if he liked coffee or tea or preferred his eggs fried or scrambled. The news he had prostate cancer was more upsetting to me than i expected. Ironic i guess. You know the prostate that which protects and nourishes reproduction was his demise. Nevertheless i still wept. i did not weep for the passing of a man (if he even qualifies as one) , but for the loss of a relationship that could have been; and a father i would never know. I guess its important to tell you i never called, or went to his funeral. I didnr even bother to ask what day he died. Though i ended up finding out through the grape vine. As i look at this picture you have your arms wrapped around me and i know i just know that little girl thought no one and nothing in this whole wide world could ever hurt her. I could never make sense of how he could walk away from a small child let alone his own child. And never seem to look back. My blood is his blood. My flesh is his flesh. And he left me. He left me to fend for my own. He left me with no thought of what the world could do to a vulnerable little girl. All this time did he ever wonder where i was? What kind of person would i grow up to be? Did he ever want to know if i was happy, safe, or well? I am his daughter am i not? I sit here thinking of this lie this terrible lie i had always told myself since i was 10. 'We always hurt the ones we love the most'. But you have never left me when i needed you most. Your hugs arent a preamble to you leaving me and never coming back. I promise you this attic no longer carries bits of him in its closets anymore. I no longer wake up and check my heart for his presence. Because poeple like you they get caught in your veins. Im sticking him into poetry and hopinig one day this is the only place he'll stay. Heres to letting go and finally seeing the sunlight. Like Alice, I stand here peering into the looking glass smiling. Smiling at all the people around me who love, care, and nurture me. Though i quiver with rage, hurt, and lossi am not alone. As you hug me like he did in this picture you assure me to stop running. you remind me of how far i have come and that ive come so far i can sometimes lose sight of where im going. But then you tell me theres nothing wrong with that because you are here to guide me back to course. I promise you i will only dream of him when the clock strikes 12 in the flitter of a fairytale i read once upon a time.

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