My Papa's Waltz

  The first paragraph of this poem leads us into a not so dulcet world of a young boy who is being abused by his drunken father. With a wretched smell of alcohol that reeks throughout the closed, and an intense atmosphere which surrounds the boy and his father, the little boy hanging on to his abusive father like an eternal flame in deep depths of hell. A young mind can do no more than take the abuse from his abusive father, swallow it in and hope that one day it will disappear like a bad dream. A dreamlike experience that was buried under a stone for depths of time.




      The everlasting fight with fire swept away throughout the mother’s kitchen as she stood there barely making any contribution to my nightmare. Her appearance was soothing but handicapped, my cry for help turned into wishful thinking as did hers. Her distant cries only came about in bits and pieces as my father and I waltzed away throughout the kitchen with the fire sweeping through on each end of the fist.


   


    The soft and tender touches that were my father’s hands at one time turned into a heavy knife that was my bloody nemesis. Sharp and effective, the knife left love marks all over my skinny wrists as I swallowed the pain and hung on to my father like death. Incoherent and foreign, my papa came out swinging as he waltzed me into darkness, every wrong step made by him was just as effective as all the right moves he has made.




My loyalty and love to papa is buried under a stone the same way a lost love is buried in depths of time. Sparkle, sparkle the boys love cannot be erased. I only wish you knew what you did as you waltzed me off to my room only so I can disappear on a red like pillow.