Lock jaw

Her too young jaw locks 

And she becomes her father

In this tic, to clench and wrestle

Her heavy breathing seems

Reminiscent of the little girl 
Not letting go

Of her bottle

For one second

Chance to make it without…

She gags at the mention

Of breakfast

Quite suddenly,

She says she is repulsed

And it may be

Because it reminds her

Of those café's and

Scattered mornings 
Here and there 
With her distant father.

He makes her stomach churn 
She says, she thinks she never needs
Breakfast again

It wasn't me, it wasn't 
Him, it was the way it started
To get tough
To hold on
To promises 
That are hard to swallow.

She learned about nourishment,
and its ultimate
End.

Nurture does not provide enough

For closed lips. Empty rooms, 
Empty calories, empty pockets 
Never kept us alive.
She is learning that it is more 
Fruitful to say, than for 
Him to hear.
Standing here and listening
Through the cracks,
I see narrow bands of light seeping out.

Forgiveness will be the only key

That opens her too young lockjaw
Allowing the Light its fitting
Liberty. 



Painting by Albert Edelfelt, 'At the door' 1901 in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

The storm has come to pass

We didn't have any pictures, she told me.
My mother said the only thing we had from him
was the toy chest he made that we kept inside my closet,
the one I used to climb in.

I'd hide in the darkness, inside the closet, inside the chest-
and I tried to believe, maybe it was all about him.

My mother has many pictures from when I was little
of my step-father's rock-and-roll band. He played guitar.
And in those old photos, there in the middle of the bass drum,
where the pillow for practice goes,
you see there is a little curled up body,

unmistakably my own.
Even long after I've long outgrown these small spaces,
I can remember feeling this heartbeat
like my own-

And I recognized, it was not about him either.
There were pictures.
She lied-plain and simply-I found-
I liked to hide
myself too.

And I can still distinctly recall feeling the floods
of darkness and thunder washing over me,
but there were no pictures of this I could find.

My mother would remind me,
not of myself.

Blonde and radiant, back then
she was more like the sun,
and likewise, one learns
too much exposure can lead to cancer.

It is the smell of rain that takes me back, the storm
that delivers these dank reminiscences,
dropping memory all over me
wet and vivid, here and now.

And under this heavily cloaked night, the sky hangs
starless and preoccupied with pushing clouds around,
building up pressure and waving flags,
whereby I cannot help but find that I share
a stark resemblance
to thin air.




Photo By Adolf Zika (Adolf Zika´s archive) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Their father and his Illegitimacy

A father has a chance to live eternally;

Deeds do not die.

The man with no story passes on

rumors; Lies fall down,

Children grow up,

the man was rumored to be a father.

His story was short-lived.

Jasons Legacy:

"It was ALL about Me"

with so many me's

none will remember which Jason story-

since he's left nothing

Generously.

Painting by Albrecht Dürer, The Painters Father (1497) in [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.