My father was a broken man.
Haunted by the war, tortured by his past.
I am nothing like my father,
But he is everything to me.

When I was five,
He walked me to school.
He pointed out the rain,
The snow, the butterflies on
The green, green grass
That always seemed to grow.
He tried his best to distract me from
Our harsh reality.
Because deep down, he knew,
Our fate was fatality.

When I was seven,
He took me to a dance.
He didn’t want to go,
But he promised he would.
And to make up for every other broken promise, he did it because he “should.”
So I wore my princess dress,
Conga-lined with my friends,
Until sobriety kicked my father in the gut
And kicked us out of the dance.

When I was ten,
I began to realize what heartbreak felt like.
It was rooted somewhere between
The drunken apologies and
My undying forgiveness.
And it wasn’t instantaneous,
It was slow, torturous,
Like the shards of each broken
Bottle of whiskey stabbing me
Until I couldn’t breathe.

When I was twelve,
I was buried alive.
Piled underneath piles of
“It’s okay… you’ll get better.”
My father that once walked me to school,
Now guided me through a living hell.
My steps through the rain and snow
Were now substituted with
Steps to the glow of the refrigerator light
As I fetched him yet another bottle of death-
But it’s okay, because he’ll get better.

And through my teenage years,
It was ripe on my tongue,
It intoxicated my nose,
It pierced through my ears.
Death.
Until finally,
I could breathe.
Because finally,
Death took his broken promises.
Death took away the heartbreak.
Death took him by the bottle,
And by the bottle, my father died.

My father was a broken man.
But what he couldn’t break, he passed down to me.
I’m still haunted by the war, tortured by the past.
I wanna be nothing like my father,
Yet he’s still everything to me.