Poetry | Jennifer Dale

To My Father

A Poem

The first narrative I ever invented was about you To make sense of the chronic pain The stained the inside my adolescent heart It wasn’t until I was ten that I finally knew your name So I made you out of the wind And let that be enough

Soreness fills my throat when I reminisce on the void that made a home inside my swollen heart Your unfiltered goodbye left me staring in the mirror Searching my face for any ounce of worth And at times it feels like I’ve been walking through this life with no water but the puddles in my puffy eyes So I hope you don’t mind if sometimes I resign I’m just trying to find my courage again