He was on of those
brainy boys,
the type
that knows more than he lets on.
He had the purest heart
I’ve ever known
and willing forgiveness,
even through the worst betrayal.

His eyes were like
dynamite before it
combusts
leaving ruin in it’s
wake.

He had that,
‘I’ll be fine in the morning’
look and his face
never really looked happy.
But I never saw that grimace
of a smile falter.

I was about six or seven
when I met him
and we clicked
it didn’t make any sense
but for that time in our
lives it didn’t matter.

He was a decade older
than me
and was always a
heartbreak away from
a breakdown.

With nothing in common except for
loneliness and a feeling of
despair. He kept me
from the damage
that I kept feeling
rake across my mind
every time that man
decided he would
pull the strings
of my marionette heart
and slit it wide open
with his presence.

With nothing but what we had
left to lose
we found happiness
in the fact
that we didn’t make sense
and we didn’t care.

I had been too young to
catch the warning signs
then and
the shades that his skin would
turn would make
thinking painful.

I asked him
if he was like me,
if he had been born
with bruises on his body
like obscure birth markings
and if that was why he always
looked like he had fallen down-
stairs.

He smiled and told me,
he’d tell me when I was older.

The dynamite
in his eyes began to fade
and as time passed
he stopped coming around.

I was heartbroken
until he told me.

I remember every fall I’ve
ever taken
every blow that’s ever landed
and every time my hair was pulled
so it didn’t make sense.

Looking back at it now
it does,
but it took me a decade to figure out
how a father could lay a hand on
his son
or how a father can leave his daughter
like she never existed.

I finally realized we had more in common
than we thought.