HAUNTED HOUSE

a fathers gentle touch

a poem that begins with a loud father is never a good thing, and this one won't be an exception. he was an angry man with a loud voice and angrier temper. my childhood was stepping on eggshells every day and night, waiting for the kitchen door to slam shut and fearing the early evenings when it opened. we were lucky when his words were slurred and his face beet red, his anger dampened by the bottles in the fridge, the pantry, the upstairs closet, the basement, the backroom (there was always alcohol, even when we were out of everything else)

i grew up hearing stories of drunken men beating their children, terrorizing their families and wives but my father would tell me he loved me while cradling a bottle of wine, he'd say goodnight to me and wrap his arms around me even when i told him not to, even when i pushed him away. the men in my life were all alcoholics and somehow they got nicer, and it scares me to think of what they'd be like if they weren't.

my father had a problem and he knew it too, but getting help means admitting you were wrong and my father will drink himself to his grave before he will ever say he was wrong. and because of this sickness and his stubbornness, i did not know the man my brother called a father. just a man who lived across the hall from my bedroom and left every morning at 5 to go to work then come home by bedtime, but never to tuck me in or say goodnight like a father should.

no, because my father was old-fashioned and men like him were raised to ignore their daughters, abuse their sons and break their backs working and drink all their emotions away at the end of the day; except anger. anger was the only thing my father knew how to express, and he used that feeling to treat my mother and brother like hell. i was eight years old and i knew to fear my father's anger before i could even do simple math.

and when you teach a little boy that the man raising him, who's supposed to love him, can hurt him and call him names? he learns that loving something means killing it. and maybe that means my brother loved me too much and i still don't know who to blame for the scars on my body and the bad thoughts in my head.

because when a boy is too small to hurt the thing killing him, he realizes that maybe hurting something smaller then him will make him stronger and if theres one thing my brother excelled at was following in daddy's footsteps.

but he was just a little boy and i was just a little girl, and maybe he knew it was wrong, or maybe he was too weak, (there are too many maybes or what ifs to fit) so instead of putting his hands on me he broke my things and hurled insults at me like i was the reason for everything wrong in our lives (maybe i was) and daddy knew it was happening and all it did was make him angrier, forcing him to raise his fists instead of putting his hands down and asking where his son learned these things.

but doing that would be admitting you were wrong and we all know how this story ends, so instead daddy's voice will get louder and so will my brothers until i am bleeding from the ears begging to go deaf so i can never hear their voices again.