Some are born balanced
On a precipice and remain
Tethered for the rest of their days
Overlooking barely there
Mental images
Fragments of a lucid dream
Of a conjured up past life
Once etched on skin
But no longer there
They speak of
Violent reinvention
And escape
While the hollow speaks
And catapults into spaces
Better left unknown

Psyches wrapped in denial
Running the gamut of habitual sins
Perpetuating legacies of pain
With hands that carry
The burdens of forefathers
Tiptoeing
In the twilight of dreams
Willing for the heavens
To send a spring that blooms

Hearts whose pounding
Reverberates endlessly
inside of ears
Eyes that get darker as they close
Meet with ours
A look
A sigh
Ascertaining a mutual recognition
Of the familiar
Shadows that plague.

Moving from apartment to apartment,
looking for a place to call home after the divorce.
Kept away from our own father by a relentless mother.
No visits. No phone calls.
He loved my sister and I with all his heart
and when months passed by and he still hadn't seen or heard from his girls, he brought Hell to mom's door step.
Pounding and yelling,
demanding to just see his daughters,
mom picked up the phone and called the law to remove him.
The only way dad could tell us he loved us
was through a cardboard sign he put up on the side of the road
so when we would ride the bus to school in the morning,
we would see it.
The moment I saw the sign, I knew it was from him.
His messy, all caps script wrote,

I LOVE YOU GIRLS.
- DAD

And I remember pressing my face to the bus window
to get a good look at it.
And I remember how my chest swelled with happiness.
Dad had to let us know he loved us.
And if that was through a makeshift sign on the side of the road,
so be it.