Like My Dad

I don’t miss you, father. What was I…? Twelve? Yes, I was 12 when we drove away from a time of hotel-hopping and cowering in our transparent shells. The hotels we evacuated to were safer because home was dangerous with you. I never saw you in the rear view mirror to wave goodbye; perhaps it is because you aren’t that type of guy. I don’t miss you because I would not be the man I am today if I had been under your training and anger-driven explaining. We left because you left us first. You marked us with debunking words and categorized family as another herd to restrain in barbed-wire walls that were welded shut by lies and shallow slaps. Mother cried, father; she cried during those lonely nights when she worked as a maid and my sister was about to engage a concave life that defined rebellion.

I grow stronger now, father. I breathe differently now. I work hard every day — I am a man trying to live wiser than you ever did because someday, when I am a father, I don’t want a 12-year-old terrified of making mistakes. I have a Dad now, father… He helped raise this hiding soul and carried through with a goal to speak soft advice into paranoid ears, provide love for someone who only feared, and fasten a new family that won’t always be near, but will always be close.

That is what I have now father, a life — a second chance since the first would have been wrapped in abuse and packaged in sheathed pain. What do you have?

Moments of sharp reflection? When your conscience flickers in the midst of graves that represent the relationships you put to death by degrading tones and aggressive hands. I don’t miss you, father — I miss what could have been, what should have been if you had just chosen to prevail your problems and set sail beyond dark waters when you were my age.

The last remnants of your presence are the genetics that built this body, but dismissing chromosomal concerns, I am happy to tell you, father, I am like my Dad.