The day I thought I won.

What was going through my father’s eyes

When I shook his hand and said goodbye..?

When I heard him say “I’m sorry”

Or when I heard him start to cry…

“Be safe out there, kiddo.” That generic fatherly line was too scripted to be the truth. I could tell he was holding back so he could still maintain an image of what his dad taught him to be a man. After all, that was what he had always done. My entire family line had been but mirrors staring at each other; rows and rows forming a tunnel. I was supposed to be another.

His voice got high as I started to open the outside door to leave, and he said: “was it because of me?”

I had just about enough room in my heart for one more lie as I summoned the letters “N,” and “O” out of my lips and laced them together with 19 years of scars.

I left and never looked back, but I could hear his tears hit the ground, like blows of a hammer in my father’s coffin.

I never looked back, but my mind sometimes jumps back to the days he used to hit me,

And to the day I thought I won.