Walks With Dad

Sandy-haired she’d wait by the door

For footsteps’ clapping up four front steps

And dad’s coffee and cigarette-stub hello

And the musky burn of a stubbled hug

As dusk poured itself

Over cracked sidewalks.

Walking side-by-side with daddy

Into town; such a thrill, no smatter of rain

Or shivering chill could shatter the jaunt

Down slick streets haunted with fuel’s

Drifting linger; they’d walk and chatter

And daddy would lift a finger to point

At a hooded homeless shadowy mess:

“Looks like someone forgot his meds,”

He tittered.

She guessed it was funny,

Cause daddy knew all.

Past towering tainted buildings,

She trotted, led by daddy’s hand

Past shivering girls with painted lips,

Smoke-ring tongues, and cried-out eyes,

Scarred wrists twisted around hips;

Track marks from the wrong side of the tracks.

Daddy’s face darkened:

“Trick-turning junkies deserve their pain,”

He claimed.

She guessed he was right,

As daddy knew all.

Along alleys, winding black pathways

They’d wander, by soot-stained bricks

Thick and crumbling, the backdrop for

Young men fumbling, holding hands;

Darting lashes, style’s flash against the trash

Of a city dusted in judging gloom.

Dad’s dooming damnation:

“Lads dressed as ladies shouldn’t be lovers,”

He snarled.

She guessed they were bad,

Because daddy said so.

Sixteen isn’t seven

And as years piled on, the walks slinked away,

Replaced by unmentioned tensions

And this depressive descension;

Deep-seated woes in solitary throes.

All her fault, in daddy’s view.

Suffocated by all she knew was true,

And all she couldn’t say,

For the despise in daddy’s eyes

Would crush and torment.

And on these wrists, the skin so thin,

Veins pounding with life would soon pound no more.

No chance to be me; no chance for joy.

For how could she say?

That deep down, daddy’s little girl

Always knew she was a boy.