childhood’s villain

Father used his fists

a lot

Though never on the kids

On the walls

and the furniture

and the doors

and the mailbox

and the fence

and the neighbors

and random people on the street

and strangers in the bar

and a few times the poor dog

and one time on mother

He was the childhood’s

villain

To defeat him one had

to become a hero

and becoming a hero

took time

And today

after all this time

the villain of childhood

was dead

He died at the hands of

some other character,

a neutral one

A cop who told him to

drop to the ground

and father didn’t

so he got shot

That was it

The end of his saga

Utterly unsatisfactory

anticlimactic

disappointing

just bad

There was no final showdown

between hero and villain

because those things

only happen in

childhood

and childhood had ended a

long time ago