Daddy, I know that you can't handle the sun
when it shines so bright that it glares,
but can't you see?
Your demons cannot be drowned
by something that you can taste.
Alcohol is of this physical world
rather than the hell inside your head,
and nothing here is strong enough
to drag the demons away.
They are something that you must feel.

I know, daddy, you're tough
and emotions are for girls.
But I'm trying to tell you this:
allow yourself to do the battling
before you raise the bottle to your lips,
only to discover after all these years
that you've been fighting a losing war.

Daddy, how much longer do I have to plea
for you to put the bottle down?
I don't want to think of each swallow
as an invisible bullet through your head.
Sure, you're surviving right now,
but I want you to be like an undying soldier.
Shoot your destructive past and present in the face
and take the demons out for good
so you can come back home to me.

All I see you doing is finding a salty lake
to dip yourself into for a little while,
hoping that your internal ememies flood out.
Only they keep leaking back in through the cracks.
I've become a distant lifeguard,
too far on the other end
for you to hear my last chance calls:
it's either keep me or the bottle, dad.

You think the shouts are the demons',
so you drench your insides in alcohol once more.
I doubt that will be the last time,
because my absence will become one of them now.

Another hated voice is all your habit has reduced me to.

-mp