kels(dot)blog

Oh, I trust that life will torture you back.
I cling to that truth with a madness. In fact,
look right here. Do you see what I’ve done?
I’ve laid out the history. I had to, to heal.
The timeline still wobbles but the rest of it’s real.

Look, dad. Look here. Remember this one?
When you broke all your ribs
on the shoreline of Kimball
and tumbled headfirst in the sand.
Ain’t it funny?

Look, this one’s better. You’re keeled over
laughing — crying? — oh, I remember
I broke ‘em again with that water balloon.
I was aiming for your skull and I missed.
Ain’t it funny?

This one’s my favourite. I did keep one picture —
they took it at school — of you looking sad.
Though that’s not the word, you look
empty and hollow and shattered. I remember
the days you were like that,
I thought maybe you lost all the strength to be cruel.
Ain’t it funny?

Come on, laugh!
There’s a whole funny chapter! It’s not wrong.
Your mom tells me we can’t change the past,
we can only move on.
So let’s laugh.

Ain’t it funny? Huh?
Remember this one, that gash in your forehead
from that glass shelf that broke in that store?
The store that you lost.
Ain’t it funny?

Remember the thousands of dollars you sank
when you spent all those years moving around?
Couldn’t live in a basement, needed a house,
needed a big one, needed a nice one
Needed that big yellow house on the corner
Needed the brick one bordering Main Street
Needed the town to believe in you, Toby
Needed the town to believe that you’re good.
Ain’t that funny?

And I meant to ask, dad, since I haven’t reached out
How your shoulder is doing? Still hurting?
In pain? No, I’m not smiling. What a rude thing to say.
Why, is it funny?

Oh, ain’t it funny how children grow up?

No, what’s funny was watching you lie
about every public-facing thing in your life, like
“I’m off to the city to be with my children”
While leaving your daughter three cities behind.

Like watching you weave some tapestric attempt
out of failed frayed endings, but you keep pretending
that this was all planned, or it’s somehow designed.
But you are as big of a failure as I, and
I’m done with the lies that I’m so sick of hearing
and sick of defending like somehow they’re mine.

Ain’t it funny, dad?
Ain’t it make you laugh?
Ain’t it easy to chuckle now that I’m gone?

Ain’t it funny?