i had always been a mediator
and a peacemaker. one who was too scared
to speak when spoken to but would throw
themselves into gnashing teeth for love.

i grew up knowing what love was.

the difference between sour liquids
never intrigued me, for i couldn't tell
the difference. all i knew was how sick
it seemed to make him and how shaky

it made my mother seem when he squinted
and accused her of his jealousies. my 6 year old self
didn't know what was in it, but soon knew the
smell which wafted from between his teeth.

sometimes it would cease and we thought
it was over. that is, until the year would turn
and he'd beg for another jug of wine, or
perhaps Listerine if my mom told him no.

i want to say once and for all:
no baby should ever have to convince their
father that suicide is the wrong way out.
no child should ever have to hold him

sobbing in their arms, begging for forgiveness
from a demon he cannot exorcise, to pin him
down when he is seizing because he wasn't able
to finish the detox, to watch him delirious on a table

as the doctors shrug at each dose of Ativan
they force into his collapsed veins.
i love my father.
but do not think i forgot the nights my

mother would slam the door behind her,
sobbing and screaming desperation into his face,
how she made a plan to leave and take us
with her in case he chose to pick the bottle instead.

how he accused her of taking his children
"just like Nancy" he would cry, and her gutteral
scream of "how DARE you" before ripping the night
sky out of her lungs and escaping into the darkness.

the night i guilt tripped him into a facility
for the last time was the same night he threatened
to take a boxcutter to his throat in the shed out back.
my younger brother overheard and the tremble in

his voice was one i had never witnessed. he was so
scared. all two hundred pounds of him climbed
into my father's unsteady arms as he pleaded with me,
he was afraid to lose the only father figure he had.

forcing help only worked when he was ready
to stop borrowing pieces of our childhood
for table scraps, flossing his teeth with
our pupils and confusion and stomachaches