setting the stage in a bright
white bathroom, fluorescents
buzzing buzzing buzzing,
glass crunches under worn boots
mirror glass as confetti,
bloodied knuckles attached to
shaking hands that grip the
edges of the cold sink
say in a voice that sounds
more and more like my fathers,
‘boy, you’re closer to the things
they kill than the things they keep’
had always planned to be a
pallbearer at my own funeral anyway,
already made sure i wouldn’t be buried
as my fathers daughter
so i go to church,
but the door handles burn into
the palms of my hands and my
knees creak to think of kneeling
what do i have to repent for anyway?
the bloody knuckles and last nights booze
still on my breath don’t make me a bad man,
they don’t make me my father
i do not seek absolution,
no penance or hail mary’s
are going to save this soul of mine
i am as a wild flower pushing through
cracked sidewalk, spindly sapling emerging
from the bark of a felled tree,
lived through the man my father was
to remake myself in my own image
and just because i picked out a coffin
in a wood that made me think of
how dark his eyes always were
when he looked at me doesn’t
mean i have to buy the damn thing
-
Author:
Boaz Priestly (Pseudonym) (
Offline) - Published: September 23rd, 2025 23:59
- Category: Letter
- Views: 6
- Users favorite of this poem: Paul Bell
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Comments3
Separation from a parent and the acceptance of self as aseparate being can be a hard won thing.
Cracked much of it in your poem.
Thank you for the kind words, and reading my work!
My father is the reason I’m an artist, and also why I will never have children of my own. I am a better man for being nothing like him.
(I am very lucky to have a very kind father figure, though! He came to my college graduation back in 2021).
Yes - pretty normal ambivalence towards parents I'd say.
This is a great poem, the power of the parent and the child who seeks a different life.
Yet parallel thinking seems to haunt his entire being.
Great coffin analogy.
Raw and hard hitting it speaks with anguish and some sense of confusion over loss. A powerful write.
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