Daddyland

By CIGAN VALENTINE

I. 
In my dreams, I see our house,
Strong and proud like a monolith,
A monument to your mythology
Marked by the lighter squares of paint
Behind missing picture frames 
And slowly rotting walls. 
A hole in the drywall,
The ceiling falling through. 

But first,
I see its streets. 
Everything is new, 
The sidewalks iron and golden. 

The ruin comes later. 
It is gentle, an old wind,
But it starts like this: 
My skinned knees bloom blood,
Like the music from your car speakers. 
The whole cacophony too much,
You turn over in your sleep—
A rumble like a car starting,
Or a bird dying. 

We belong to a household of hurt,
Where wounds spread wider,
Faster,
When treated. 
You are a surgeon
With a fear of broken things.

I call for you, 
And my voice rings out in the silence,
Plummets off the precipice surrounding our house, 
Falls away to a place where we no longer exist. 

Black boys don’t have daddies,
You tell me,
The word part of a forbidden language
That brands your tongue.
I call you papa. 
Really, I want to scream,
But I am not a boy.  

II.
In the dream, it is always Easter.
Days go by 
And still it is Sunday,
And still we wait.

Meanwhile, we learn to live with absence.

We tiptoe through the days when you sleep. 
We sleep through the nights you are gone.
We wait hours at the dinner table,
Drool dripping onto our plates and once-gleaming silverware,
Breath steaming in the air
Like starving hounds. 

When you walk through the door we will gather ourselves. 
Time to eat,
My mother will say. 
We weren’t waiting long for you.

Finally, you appear.
It has been years by then. 
You no longer recognize me by how tall I am. 
You call me by my sister’s name. 

It is the second coming no one anticipated,
Years too late. 
We no longer pray. 
My mother does not dust your photographs,
Or your body, where it is pinned to the wall. 

We ask you where you had gone,
And you say you became blue 
From when the sky had swallowed you,
And spat you back up. 
For you are the worst type of unbeliever. 
You only believe in love. 
You do not believe in forgiveness. 

Before eating,
We recite your list of those who have wronged you,
And the names fill a church, 
The pews stretching away to a past you cannot remember. 

If they saw you now,
Would they get on their knees for you,
I wonder,
Break their backs,
Allow the pavement to strip them of their skin?

I think I would. 
I think they would
See a phantom. 

III. 
The day is ending,
And we run from the darkness,
Screaming like hawks. 

In our only bathroom,
I watch you undress. 
Naked, you seem more clothed,
All strong arms and blackened tattoos
Emerging from soft sheets of steam. 

Me below you, 
A wrinkle in the bedrock from which you were carved.

I try to imagine a time when you are really gone 
Like the old office we demolished 
At the back of the kitchen,
Where it smelled of grease
When things went to smoke. 

I imagine sledgehammers
Being brought to you instead,
And watching your body crumple
Into the chasm beneath your desk. 
The workers mixing concrete,
Sawing wood,
Sealing up the sky over your broken limbs. 
A flight of stairs emerging over you. 

For now, though, we brush our teeth,
Keeping time with abcs,
Our reflections facing away from each other 
In the mirror. 

What’s wrong?
I whisper,
But all you say is that the mint makes you cry. 

We add a second bathroom,
And then another.
Still, you leave,
No need to imagine it this time.
We piss ourselves,
Waiting for you to come back. 

IV. 
I want to imagine you reading this. 
No, that’s not how it was,
You would say. 
But we both know it’s too late. 

So instead, 
I picture you standing proud
In front of the house where you raised me, 
Or, I guess,
Tried your best.

Cigan Valentine is a junior at Amherst College and an Editorial Assistant for The Common.