#jujabee

a poem I wrote because I'm convinced that the humanization of my father is going to kill me

I used to be my father’s little princess

The evidence captured in a mere photograph

Of me in a fluffy white dress

My birthday maybe

My father is holding me up to the sky

Like a precious jewel

I’m glowing with joy in the picture

And my father does not flinch at the glare

A certainty in how much love we had for each other

I don’t know when I stopped being

Daddy’s little girl

My father knows nothing about me these days

For I am not the little girl he expected me to be

And it is not someone I would recognize

I remember how small I look in that photograph

And I realize how small I am now

I try to make sense of how a man who

Looks as gentle as my father

Could ever ruin something so small and frail and

Defenseless

My father never protected me from the monster under my bed

Because the monster had his voice

And his eyes

And his hands

I don’t know if it was the monster or my father who taught me

That guilt and shame will always be my first emotions

While I tried to show them that anger should be their last

And as the years pass

And the photograph becomes a faded memory

I see my father become the vague idea of 

The father I wanted him to be all this time

And I hold the same rage that he only reserved for me

In my stomach instead of my fists

And I forgive him against my will

Forgive him as my own personal punishment

My father taught me that there were many things that I should hate about myself

But the one thing I hate the most about myself is

how much I love my father

There is never an apology that comes for me

And my father’s growth is exponential

But I am still so small and exponentially

Shrinking

Instead of apologies

I am met with guilt and shame at the anger that I’ve

Failed to digest

Because at least he’s trying now

At least there is improvement

And I should be happy

Yet I struggle to swallow the

“Too little too late”

That sits like bile in the back of my throat

These days my father is not my father

But just a man

I forced myself to forget that he was once lurking at the foot of my bed

I’m finding it difficult to know the difference between

Man and Father and Monster

I want to tell him that I am still small

But I do not know who I am talking to

These days my father asks me one question about myself

He asks, “How much do you love me?”

Our memories together wrap tightly around my throat when he asks me this

And with the burning hatred I’ve reserved only for myself

A small voice that I don’t recognize whispers,

“Too much.”