{{ SHIFT+CONTROL KARMA SPEAKS }}
YOU WERE NEVER MY FATHER ANYWAY BY DENISE “KARMA” CLIFFORD
They say forgiveness is not for the other person, but for self peace and so I forgave you long ago. Yet, I wonder as you faced your maker if the demons you left behind years ago with a little girl were there to remind you. I’m curious to know if the guilt you deserve lay thick in the air just above you, like a dark, dank blanket for you to inhale as your last breath. The memories you left for those you ran away from, wondering what it was they did so wrong, is the last thing left lingering upon your lips. And the sounds of a little girl begging for the father who wasn’t even good enough for her to come back. Yet little girls don’t know this; they have to learn it the hard way. With penciled letters stained with teardrops sent to places where you wish as you lie awake at night, that It made it there. Pleading with the universe to bring you your father back. Promising you won’t do whatever it was to make him leave in the first place. Begging for the return of the foulest toxic person you ever knew. Because this time, you won’t wake him when he’s sleeping off last night’s booze-infested fist to cuffs. Last night’s mistress and her kids, thrown into your face in the middle of the night. Because he likes to fight with her too, and my mom says kids don’t belong at the bar. So they come to sleep at our house, with their runny red noses and frightened, confused looks behind eyes that hold tears of pain. I know this look and pain, yet I get to sleep in my own bed tonight. Begging for a shell of a man filled with 278
ROCHESTER WOMAN ONLINE : MAY/JUNE EDITION 2021
nothing but lies and the stench of stale beer and nicotine. It’s a smell you never forget and will forever associate with the behaviors of the one who taught you how not to trust a man. Begging to the deaf ears of a man who held no remorse as he packed it up and ran as far away, leaving the words forever etched in your brain, “I’ll be back, we will go fishing. I promise,” and so I waited.
infused demons that I hope sat in the shadows of the room when he lay dying alone. Phone calls to ease a coward’s conscience for another 6-12 months, yet make the manipulative mind of a girl fall right back into the web of lies created for the sake of a drunken fool. I waited while you chose when it was convenient for you to want to play dad. Yet every time you brought along with it the lies, the manipulation, and you ruined everything good in your wake. You cared for nothing and no one unless it was to benefit what your wants were. And when my wishes were answered too late, you came back. I had wished that one away when I recognized what a father indeed was, and it wasn’t you. Yet you were always good at lying and making people feel sorry for you to get what you needed. You cried victim here, and my truth to you made me the bad guy. I was still young, and so I believed your distorted perceptions spewed unto me. So much that you destroyed the world, I had come to know. Again, your toxic-filled life brought ruin to another phase of my life.
I waited for the 2 AM drunken voice on the phone crying to the vulnerable little girl I used to be and asking me to love him, feeling the drunk guilt needing to be cured by a frail broken-hearted child who begged for the slightest bit of attention, from her dad. I was asking if he received the letters, never getting a straight answer. These phone calls were the evil spirit-
You tried hard to coax my brother and me that you in fact, were “our dad”. I gave you another chance, yet told you I was not a weak-minded child anymore, and that you will never be my dad. I know you despised me for this, so I told you to prove to me you deserve to even be in my life. I gave you the opportunity, yet you couldn’t even put work into establishing I could trust
