They Asked Me

They asked me, what do you know about your father? i know he shared a date with my mother after the club in his car he took an unexpected detour to his apartment my mother said, i didn’t feel right i know his cheap breaks whispered the sounds of Armageddon and his rusted exhaust sputtered the reasons we were taught to run away if we were ever approached by a man in a van as children i know that because of my father when my mother looks at the wrinkles in my forehead she is reminded of the storyline she is forced to live through i know that when she looks at my face she can only think of hers being shoved into a bed like the hand of god was gripping the back of her skull trying to show her freedom could be found if she could break through to the other side while bed sheets served as a graveyard for her faith in humanity the innocence in her tears would burn stains the shape of justice into the deformed face of circumstance my father made my mothers womb his crime scene and im the finger prints he left behind they asked me how has your fathers crime affected your life well i have the personality of a white picket fence always appearing to be alright while guarding the pain of a broken home ive spent too much time in the asylums of my mind looking for a glass box marked break incase of an absent father in hopes that it was holding my identity but i never found it and i cant keep relationships girlfriends would tell me i bet you would do anything to get inside my pants but those words felt like vice grips squeezing the comfort from my soul so i keep very few key people in my life because i find it necessary to constantly switch the locks on my emotions because of my father every breath that take is like an oil spill because my heartbeat pumps his disgust through my veins psychiatrists would tell me, you are slitting your wrists because youre depressed... i was just trying to flush all the him out of me and i tend to avoid mirrors because i know physical traits are hereditary and if he was capable of sculpting my face im afraid that if i look into my own eyes i might find that i inherited his mistakes and be destined to grow up to be just like him and in that courtroom hearing that lawyer still had the nerve to ask me if i thought my father deserved to be released on parole