A ***** roadside hotel should suffice.
Mom and Dad are arguing again,
And I am too little to know why.
I watch The Addams Family.
That night, I am scared that Thing
Will catch me sleeping on the floor.

There are no childhood photos
Or memories of a bedroom.
Only disconnected images
That jump from buying jars of honey
From the basement of an unknown Aunt
In the middle of the night
To steering the car from the passenger seat
With a paper plate.
I don't even know who was driving.
The mission halls were kinder.
I can remember running through the sadness
For a peanut butter and jelly.

We had family reunions
With strangers who let me play baseball,
And I ducked the tag
The way I've been ducking you.
The gravel mixed with blood;
I was reckless and young.
The arm I'd flung to catch me
Had dragged through the dirt.

At 5 years old, you brought me to a home
Where an older boy tried to tell me
Let's play Mommies and Daddies.
His Mommy must have known,
And when she flung back the sheet
His eyes widened,
Expanding like the ****
He had wanted me to ****.
I found you watching wrestling.
When I climbed in your lap
I wondered if she would tell you.
I don't think you ever held me again.

You dropped some quarters in my hand
To keep me quiet.
Hour 4 in the smoky haze
Of the VFW where you did not belong.
I won a cup from the crane machine.
Too late, you say to wash it first,
And there is dirt in my water.

Mom blows smoke rings
In the car outside your work.
I think she is spying.
The oval shapes bring calm-
An order I requested
On a night that made no sense.

There were no friends to call
When at 3 a.m. I pushed a car,
Wrapped in my blankie.
Friends would have been asleep,
Power rangers beside their beds
With the heat on.
But it was so cold, and we had run out of gas.
What had you run out of? Patience?
I can remember waking in the car;
You pressed a drink to my lips.
It tasted better than anything I'd had before.
I woke in the morning
In a house where I was hated,
And the kids had drank my nectar.
The cup said Tom's on the side.

You left me there.
I think her name was Michelle.
She told me I couldn't play
Until I'd learned to tie my shoe.
I sat and watched my sister on the park
With kids I didn't even know.
Laces on the ground, and I was ashamed.
Later, she'd tell me she didn't have the key
When her son put a pair of play handcuffs on me.
I spent the entire day waiting.
Her husband, it seemed, could get them off.
At 4p.m. I found the button
That released me.
She had known the whole time.

At 6, I saw you for the last time.
I watched, crying, from the window
As Pop told you to clear out.
When you drove off, was part of you relieved?
I think you must have been.
You didn't fight for us.
Dad got custody, but he didn't want us.

Dad raised us in bars.
I sang Hootie and the Blowfish
With a man named Cricket.
Watched a million pool cues
Bang against the Rusty Wallace decor
That was too close to the table.
My picture might still be on the wall
Of that place called Ernie's.
I know it like others knew their rooms-
The ones I didn't have
Or those that didn't welcome me.

When Mom left, you found a sucker.
Sheriff lady.
What a stupid ******* name.
I thought she was nice
Because she didn't get mad
When I couldn't finish my salad.
It lasted a week
Before she hit me.

It's funny.
I found the court documents
Where you wrote that Mom abused us-
Written like you'd cared.
But I can still hear the screams
Of my sister as they held her down
At 8 years old.
She couldn't even sit down the next day.
You were out drinking, of course.

The guidance counselor interrupted my lunch once
Said Derek, how are you doing?
You had driven your motorcycle through a parade
While we were at home being broken.
I said I was fine,
Because happiness and sadness
Started to look like the same **** thing to me.

You made me hope for a way out
When at 17 I fell in love.
I left that house for a warmer one,
Where I had begun lighting fires on my own.
You never taught me
How to be kind.
I was looking out for me at her expense.
I traded love for loyalty,
Brought her down to my level,
'til she felt too weak to leave me.

But with distance came perspective
And she left, too.
Which was good, I thought
When two years later
I learned I was the problem.

I'm in my thirties now.
Something is wrong.
I've had love and life and laughter,
But you still won't show up for me.
Sometimes I see you
Dancing in the eyes of my little girl-
Light that doesn't belong to me.

I think I am broken
In ways that cannot be mended-
In ways that cannot be loved for a lifetime.
I am built for friends to love, from a distance.
I am not made for you,
Nor you for I.
I am not meant to be happy.
I am just meant to die.