I’ve been going through every emotion known to woman-kind. All my feelings are skin deep, and I sit and find my eyes and heart filling with tears at the slightest provocation. I am depressed…
I think, I’ll shake this off, this isn’t going to keep me down, this isn’t going to get me down! But then I think, this is my Daddy. This is my father I am talking about here.
I can’t say that him dying is going to effect my day to day life, I’ve spent hardly any time in his company since I was a child; he was no father to me, gave me nothing but genetic material and the art of rebellion and non-conformity…. but this is still my father.
I have not slept four straight hours since Friday night. I am so tired, so exhausted that I am truly running on fumes. I am in that place where numb shock has seeped so deeply into my bones, into the fabric of me that I have crossed over into the surreal.
I cannot sleep. I cannot sleep… I cannot stop eating. I have stopped smoking.
I have such pragmatic concerns like the will, the burial plot and such; but talk myself out of it… it can’t be happening so quickly. Except I’ve been trying to reach a lawyer in Trinidad to make arrangements for my father and brother to go and see him.
Three years I was telling my father about making his will, and he kept brushing me off. Now he is anxious to make sure that the will is taken care of… there’s a lump in his neck… and this is what keeps reminding me… this is real and happening.
Water is below the surface– a threatening flood — but damned up, blocked up… just little trickles, small cracks in the facade.
I’m telling the truth when people ask me how I am; I don’t know. I am confused, I feel like I am four years old and someone is explaining to me why I can’t see my Daddy… and the explanation doesn’t make sense.
I am angry… and selfish. Why is it that I can’t just find peace from drama? I cannot get ahead.
Between worrying about the job situation and my father, I am stranded out, worn… frightened and feeling so alone in the world it’s not fucking funny.
O Papi
posted Tue, 10 May 2005 19:38:24 -0700
in twice eyes mi papi stood
abused & hurt
a product of black man violence on black man flesh
old now and alone with the anguish of genius
unsolved
struggling to spread the seeds
unheeded
burning bright holes into the fabric of time
o papi
sad eyes need not cry any longer
only learn
Add comment