I found you fetal last night, Daddy
In an ethanol embrace,
Cold-air caressed;
A hobo fashioned from the middle class
Who chilled me and killed me
Until I was as dead as your eyes.
You’ve gotten fat, Daddy,
I noticed last night as
Your belly stumbled inside,
Bad foot in shoe,
Taking up space in the universe
But more so in my mind.
Because you’ll always be there, Daddy
In the bars and at the parties
And in the boy who
Offers me a glass,
For in one month I’ll be 18
And condemned to the stigma of
Poor Miss Daddy Issues, to
Sip lonely coffee and cry lonely tears,
To wonder why boys don’t like me.
I’ll exist in a universe that is overshadowed
By your pinot presence,
Your liquor latency.
So go away, Daddy.
Go curl up outside again,
Outside of me, outside of you.
Don’t curse me so,
Don’t infect me, consume me, for
Daddy, I will have to kill you
Like Sylvia did, but worse.
Otto died so young
And you will die so old to me,
A swollen husk that I will
Never romanticize, never put
Good foot in shoe, never seek out
In the faces of strangers and boyfriends
And husbands and widowers.
You’re immortalized as the stale corpse,
The sad-sack loser slumped
Outside of his own home,
A squatter of the first order,
A father of the last.