1

When I was little

I was too young to understand anything

But bubbles, blankets and balloons

I would play in my crib all day while my father would light up in the next room

 

2

Nothing is harder for a mother than telling her daughter that the money she saved in her piggy bank was taken by her father for drugs

 

3

I can’t smell weed anymore

I don’t pick up on it when someone smokes it

Perhaps it was because it was all that was around me when my father was around

I have become blind to the scent

 

4

When my mother got married again

I hated my step-dad

I thought he would leave us too

That he would abandon us just like my father did

 

5

No calls were ever made

Birthdays

Christmas

Easter

Never

 

6

No child support either

My mom had to work four jobs to support us

And I still hate her a little inside for never spending time with me

Even though I know it’s my father’s fault

 

7

When I turned eighteen

I finally got a call on my birthday

I got a call

Only to ask why I hadn’t called him

My mom had hired a private investigator ten years earlier to try to find him

 

8

When I wrote a letter to my father

His response was to call me his “lost princess”

As if I didn’t know where to go or what to do

He said that things were not all his fault

He told me all about his new family

 

9

When my father came up to visit me

He took me to the fucking zoo

The animals weren’t even out

At least I knew my way home

 

10

My father came back into my house

Saying he was clean

With a bag of weed in his coat pocket

Saying he would never abandon us again

But I had learned to let go

Finally