Ficly

Dad

Even the all-powerful Sylvia
wrote about her Daddy
and how she didn’t like
his German tongue or mind…
or the rest of his body.

And I will admit,
it’s hard to search through the piles
of files
in my molted brain
to find bad memories—
though there were plenty.

Slithering, my father
was the weakest python I knew.
Sick as a dog,
a very sick dog-snake he was.

And selfish too.

But he wanted our love and
my sister hung over backwards over cliffs to give
it to him,
her thin hair waving back and forth,
like a pocket watch to hypnotize me.

But I wasn’t always easily swayed.

I had my hoops set up for him…
a fucking obstacle course.
I expected too much from a man with a handicap sticker for his car…
That he used without a beat.

And he could eat and eat even
when he got down
to 100 lbs.

And of that weight,
at least half was man.
The rest was sickness
and a smear of fear, but mostly sickness and resignation.

I couldn’t really ask for much then…
wow, she fucking said selfishly.

He died at 44, how sad.

View this story's 5 comments.