Skull & Sunflower

Jonathan Brooks

“IS YOUR DAD HOME? IT’S AN EMERGENCY.”

Kate Carey

My father was quick to help

those who needed medical attention.

Friends and neighbors always calling,

using my father’s paramedic training to

see if their injury was serious enough to go to the doctor.

I guess he was one of those people

who never learned about emotional emergencies.

Never knew that spiteful words could cause

holes in his children so large

that years later still begged for suture.

Somehow he would run out the door—no shoes on—

to help a seizing cousin

but was blind to the way his shouts seized our world.

For years it was easier to paint him as monster,

a man who sped up on purpose when my mother yelped,

whose eyes bulged like his neck veins when he shouted.

As an adult, there are days I finally fight back

using my voice as a shield.

Those days, I am his spite personified,

and I swear I will publish EVERYTHING,

and I will name his name.

But then there are days like this.

His voice turned smaller by half,

him finding the pulse of a stranger to be adequate.

It is hard for me to reconcile that he has

saved so many lives

while decimating ours.

It’s hard for me to understand the many

he has rescued from a blaze

while he was busy burning down our house.