Perhaps my father was the first,<\/p>\n
with his absence,<\/p>\n
except for the rare storms from his daytime slumber<\/p>\n
to terrorize us into quiet so he could sleep.<\/p>\n
I once got caught in the cross fire of his flying hands.<\/p>\n
I was not yet 3.<\/p>\n
My older sisters squealed and screamed him awake.<\/p>\n
But I was too naive to run.<\/p>\n
Before that, he was the myth my mother made us believe<\/p>\n
about fatherhood and tender love.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But the one I can summons from memory caves<\/p>\n
was the gorgeous boy<\/p>\n
with the ass long shiny silk brown hair<\/p>\n
and tan flawless skin\u00a0sunk into Italian brown eyes.<\/p>\n
I was 13 and he 15.<\/p>\n
He paid me attention, walked with me at night<\/p>\n
on a quiet moon-lit road named Candlewood as we<\/p>\n
murmured our intentions, our future married selves<\/p>\n
–or I did.<\/p>\n
I couldn’t believe he was interested in me, a brainy<\/p>\n
average-looking girl with the wrong kind of hair–<\/p>\n
refusing to hang long from a middle combed part.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
And a week after that walk under the old gibbous moon,<\/p>\n
when I told him I wanted to marry a bodily lover,<\/p>\n
he failed to appear, non-responsive, ghosted–<\/p>\n
and I cried the clich\u00e9 with a painful heart, torn<\/p>\n
and scorned, never to be stabbed the same again,<\/p>\n
my pillows my week-long companions in sob-town.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Though others made Caesar of my heart, dagger<\/p>\n
hurlers and stabbers, I remember them vaguely.<\/p>\n
Not like that first cut, the baptismal soul’s sarcophagus.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Perhaps my father was the first, with his absence, except for the rare storms from his daytime slumber to terrorize us into quiet so he could sleep. I once got caught in the cross fire of his flying hands. I was not yet 3. My…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26489"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26652,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26489\/revisions\/26652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}