“It doesn’t matter,” I tell myself, allowing my thoughts to overwhelm me. But there has to be the reason why I was left to scroll through the media, taunted with the fact that I was abandoned. I have surpassed 16 Happy father’s Days, most where the star of the play never showed.
Yet my family and I continued on with the show. A show that was meant to be 5 became 4, my father’s lines were memorized by my mother and my sisters and I played along as eloquently as possible. We smiled and laughed as we struggled to make our act look like it was not difficult. Living paycheck to paycheck, bad memories drenched into our mahogany walls, living nights in our small roach-infested apartment, wondering why surviving was so hard.
I was not raised like most stereotypes would suggest, I did not enter this world barren of the fruits most children were lucky enough to eat. I was just born into the world that was darker than most. My nights consisted of smothering loud cries, pushing my father away when he took it too far and clenching my eyes closed when I no longer felt safe in my own home. So no, he did not remove himself from the equation before I was added. He made sure I got to know him, love him, then fear him before he decided that having a family was too much to carry. Years later I would finally realize that this was a good thing and that if he had really stayed I would not have survived as long as I have.
But that still does not make Father’s day any easier.
Kenya Burton Poetry 