What Daddy Doesn't know.

Daddy,
Read me a bedtime story.

once upon a time,
there was a little girl
who fell down a well.
she couldn't swim,
so she floated at the top with the mosquitoes.

they taught her survival.

she grew to love the smell of algae
and thought she might just stay at the bottom
sucking fish eggs and belching guppies.

my daddy doesn't know me.
he doesn't know his little girl gives
head like an MVP.
he didn't hear the rumor that she was easy
when she was really just needy,

hungry,

sucking away like the mosquitoes
taught her to
to fill their empty spaces with anyone
willing to
give her
one night
one hour
or one glance
at her body
charging boys behind dumpsters to view
her scars
her scars
charging men their mortality for the
touching of her wounds
my wounds

because no one ever became president
after fucking me
or even a generally decent human
being.
you start digging through that rubble,
you'll have nightmares for weeks,
so put down the shovel
and come to bed.

daddy,
promise me there are no monsters under my bed-
or in between my thighs.

my daddy doesn't know that there are
girls standing in corners
hiding fistfuls of semen
waiting to be old enough to know what
to do with it.
he doesn't know there are
girls who kiss girls
who are afraid to kiss boys because
boys might just snatch the smile right
off your face.
he doesn't know there are girls that
sleep under grandma quilts.
stained comforters.
and men that remind them of
redemption.

it is the irony in searching for
salvation in the enemy
and the paradox in assuming that every
man you'll ever sleep with
is the enemy

and i have not had the heart to tell
my daddy
that there are girls who have shaken
hands with the devil
and i hear he steals fingernails,
making it very difficult for the girls
at the bottoms of wells
to claw their way out eventually.

my daddy asks me
what happened to my little girl
the one who used to dance on my feet?

i tell him she totes guns in her eyes
awaiting approaching disasters
like car bombs on cruise control.
she speaks in drips
and while you have stopped speaking
back
the mosquitoes are evolving
the fish taught me to swim
i feel my escape nearing
and i say

the devil can have my fingernails

cause i've still got

my teeth.


**My father, was never really my father. He was a man that would come around every so often, and basically kidnap me from my mother and take me to Winston Salem, NC. That was approximately 4 hours away from Rocky Mount. I hated waking up on the days I knew he was coming. He would get me 4 hours away from everything I loved to basically disappear on me. I wouldn't see him again until it was time to go back to Rocky Mount.

He'd leave me with her. That evil wench of a woman who resented me as a child. You know something has gotta be wrong with a woman that will resent a child. Well she did and she clearly added to my distaste of being at my father's.

The last time I saw him, was May of 2002. That was 5 years ago. Things got a little different between us when I got older. The calls stopped coming on birthdays and holidays and the money definitely stopped. My mother never took out child support, but whenever I needed something, he's provide. I guess he figured that could be his love and he wouldn't have to invest anything else into my growth as a person.

But after I graduated high school, he went MIA. Telling me he was going to send me money and never did. Just all kinds of false promises. Then the calls just stopped all together. No contact whatsoever. Not even an answer when I'd call. So I was pretty much over my father.

Then he decides to call on my birthday and on the message tell me that he is sorry for missing my call. He missed more than just one call. He missed about 3 years, if you count from the last time we were in contact.

...to be cont.