Daddy

When my therapist said you were a terrible father, you flared up, almost cascaded out of my mouth.

Most of the time now, I don’t scurry around in dim corners. I don’t juggle sarcastic comebacks, throw I’ll-get-you-first daggers, leave. I don’t spin recluse spider webs around myself. Still, sometimes the fault lines crack open, and there you are, looking at me like you opened up a Tupperware from the back of the fridge and saw something disgusting. But now, Daddy, look into the Tupperware of you: Festering, slimy. Rancid.

Guess what? The defective one, the unlovable, it was never me.

Dirty Laundry

When you hit me, Daddy, do you aim for my thighs, buttocks, back, belly?

Or do you strike out blindly, carried on tsunami waves that were born fathoms deep and travel far, growing in fury until they break on the designated shoreline of my body?

Where your hand or fist or belt pounds into my very cells that I am bad, bad, bad—like in ancient times on the morning after a wedding, when the women would pound the sheets
against rocks to beat out the stains—

You pound and you pound, and then you hang me out to dry.