I wrote this when I was about 19. I shared it with my dad because I had a desperate need to communicate to him how worried I was for him. How sad I was that he and my mom had separated. I gave him several poems, and then left him alone to ponder what the hell I was about. Then a week or so later, during dinner, the stack of papers came out of his pocket. Along with his reading glasses. And we really talked about what I had written. This conversation made me feel heard as an author and as a daughter.
I apologize for the violence in this poem. It was reality for me at the time.
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traditional hanging
It is sick and unnecessary
but I am always scared to open
closed doors in our home
because I fear I would see
your body hanging,
hanging on the last thread of the house,
hanging mute with mistake.
I remember that too. I'm still struck by the plaintive urgency of the first line.
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