Many nights I wished him dead, my father.
No longer to remember his thudding
up the stairwell, plodding, heavy—
a pallbearer in polyester pants—
come with one surreptitious forehead kiss
to check that I am sleeping.
Kisses are a decoy. I use them too;
entwine to sniff out adultery:
perfume,
an overlay of salt and
soap, pungent
cunt underneath my
husband’s tongue.
I faked obedient sleep, a sham angel,
to turn Father back to his cacophony,
his chaos, leave my small world unsullied
by all those exemplum’s, the exegesis—
I could never escape being
bad.
And even at five, Daddy’s derision:
my alienating ugliness, foul breath,
my willfulness a stink so vile
it permeated air like yeast in a bakery.
Shame was the only sense I could make of it.
Kisses elicit lies. Like the rapist
who whispered “I love you”, stroking
my hair.
How flattery and attention disarm me;
a disembodied ghost of a negligible child
conscripted into the supporting role,
or an intrepid diver,
never sure
which kisses come
without a parachute
or whether I care.
That kiss, unexpected, unwarranted
in a world where if tenderness played out
it was a theatrical role, a soliloquist
acting-out parent in a
pop-up performance.
Even at five, I misunderstood
the musty curtain, the every-changing scripts,
all the mirrors, distorting
mirrors; I thought I saw affection.
I giggled. My eyes opened. Another?
The last good kiss, at fourteen, my
first taste
of boy and an
unfettered desire,
like desire was a
property of the self.
It was purity
slipstreaming eternity,
an image of mutuality
I could hold to,
an Ace of Hearts up my
sleeve, so lovely,
that I will never forgive my father
his whiskey and cigar saturated kiss
given only when I was compliant
as a corpse, and a return of affection
was an affirmation that diminished him.
His rage marked upon me a permanent blemish.
His rage, now mine, burrowed
and bored.
Finally, impossible to
escape or resist;
it is renewed in every
false kiss.
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