Daddy, you were(n't) supposed to

You spent twenty years
telling
me
I was trash.
Your voice echoed in my ears
"You're nothing but a piece of shit.
You'll never amount to anything."

Daddy, you were supposed to love me.

My ears still remember
the time you took the thick
hardcover
book,
cracking it against my face.

Blood streamed from my ears
but
it was with my tears
that I saw red.

Daddy, you weren't supposed to beat me.

So many nights
I spent sleeping
on hardwood floors,
crying because
you didn't love me.

Daddy, you were supposed to protect me.

Do you remember the night
your fist smashed the glass
of our blue wooden door
and
your blood
painted
the lawn?

Daddy, you weren't supposed to be drunk.


Two years this December
you walked out that door
and never looked back.

Daddy, your selfishness nearly killed my mother.

Four years ago
you collapsed with three brain aneurysms.
I couldn't bear to look at you
a bloody leopard
corpse
in your hospital bed.
You were supposed to die that October.

Daddy, sometimes I wish you had.

For the first time
in
twenty-one years,
I crush your voice beneath
my tower feet.

Daddy, I am finally free.

In May, I will walk across that stage,
diploma in hand,
and
I'll smile into the crowds
because I will have proven that
I finally did it-
I gave myself a future
when you always told me I couldn't.