Father

Flashes of broken up memories enter my mind only in dreams. Questioning the validity of these ‘memories’ I become a child with my endless asking.

A man only known to me through stories. A legend of infamy. I live vicariously through my mother’s nightmares.

Trying to understand these images. The shattered glass on the floor, the needle sticking in the flesh. Viewed through bars like a caged tiger.

How many people know you this way? How many others have stared down the barrel of your gun? When I ask they tell me it was only the drugs.

Excuses for chemically induced behavior. So I wonder, can they be my excuses too?Because something’s not right with my brain chemistry and I wonder if I was born insane or made this way. A drug creates an excuse for anything but when you’re mad you only have yourself to blame.

Rage brings tears to my eyes when I think of all the men, like you, passing through life riding on their excuses. How can you excuse the bruises on my mother’s thin body? Or the man who stuck his hand up my Cinderella nightgown? Or the man old enough to be my father who held my prepubescent body a little too tight and a little too long. Then took surprise when I flinched, pretending not to know the affects of his actions. Ignorance is his excuse but I?

I am only the crazy girl.