Suicide or Murder

It's about my father. Enough said.

Suicide or Murder

It’s… It’s taking me a while to think of how to write this… It hurts to try and re-tell the tales that have haunted me ever since I could hold a thought… This is about my family, specifically my father. I’ll try my best to paint a picture for you.

“I’m going to Hess to grab some things; I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

My sister asks him,

“Dad, can I go with you?”

“No, Brianna. I’ll be right back.”

“Dad why can’t I just co-“

“Because Brianna, you’re f*****g staying home!”

“Okay, jeez… Calm down.”

He left for “Hess” earlier today, at around five pm. It is nine pm now. January 19, 2014.

 Hess is about two minutes down the road.

“Kyle, do you know where Dad went?”

“He said he went to Hess, but that was hours ago.”

“That f*****g man, I’ll tell ya, I’m going to kill him one of these days.”

“Yeah, Mom. I know he’s an a*****e.”

“You’re damn right he is. Don’t unlock the door for him tonight.”

“Why the f**k would I open the door for him? I don’t want him coming back.”

“You and me both.”

 

 

 

Excuse me for sounding rash,

But while he’s out I wish he got in a car crash

I wish that man would die, f**k calling him a man I wish that

Boy

Would die,

I’m sick of seeing my f*****g mother cry

Night after night falling asleep alone in her bed,

Thoughts of checking in on her float around my head

I step into her room and ask if she’s okay

“Yeah honey, I’m fine it’s no different than yesterday.”

I say alright and tell her I love her, I say goodnight

My fists clenched-

Here comes the good part-

The fight.

I swear I’m gonna kill that man the second I get the chance,

He knows I’m out for blood

On my mother he would never lay his hands

Out of respect for her? Not.

But he for damn sure knows if he tried to hurt her now I’d snap his f*****g neck

Rip his throat out and tie it in a knot

I apologize if this is getting a little graphic Mrs. Kelleher,

But you have to understand

These are the feelings and thoughts being felt by a sixteen year old boy forced to live like a man.

“Kyle, you don’t do anything around the house, you’re a lazy a*s”

Says my eighteen year old sister out of class, full of sass, out with her friends every other night

Enjoying the hookah and a glass

Meanwhile my so-called lazy a*s is sweeping the floors

Vacuuming the stairs- yes, my dad makes me do that weekly-

There’s no exaggeration there.

Scrubbing the toilet

Cleaning the dishes

As I’m typing this the wounds I’ve healed away are tearing at the seams again

I need more stitches

At home I feel worthless, call me a mama’s boy but my mom’s the only one who

Makes me feel worth it

People around school ask me, “Why don’t you smoke or drink? You’re no fun.”

I hope you’re as enraged as me when this section of the story’s done

I get home from school to the familiar smell of pot,

I try to hold my breath to say hi to my dad as he’s smoking and having his brain rot

“Hey boy” is what I get

I’m lucky if I get that. Don’t feel upset for me though, I don’t encourage him to talk to me

I just wish he’d leave me alone

Leave us all alone

If he did my mom’s paychecks from her hardwork as a teacher wouldn’t be getting stolen

For his drugs

 For his pot

For his crack cocaine,

Jesus

It’s all resurfacing; my heart’s gasping in pain

But anyways, no. Hold it together Kyle. You know what would happen if he left us alone?

We’d have food on the table every night,

Hell

My mom would even be able to keep up with paying for our phones

I wouldn’t have to explain to my friends

Why I don’t have money to go out with them

“It’s fine Kyle, we can pay for you!”

I reluctantly accept, but Jesus Christ, do you know how that makes me feel?

I get so f*****g angry at him, the world doesn’t seem real

It’s his entire f*****g fault, of course it is

Of course

You can’t blame my mom, she feels trapped in her marriage,

Too scared to wonder where he’d end up

If they divorced.

She hates him more than I do, like a flower with no sun

The stress in her life practically withered her away

All because she’s scared he’ll go homeless, without food

She has to let him stay

Every day is a constant struggle, that’s no lie either

Every

F*****g

Day

Is a struggle. For all of us. My mom lost her husband to drugs.

My siblings and I lost our father to drugs.

All of my relatives lost a son, a nephew, an uncle, a brother

To drugs.

He wasn’t born this way, a thief and a liar

Who ruins my life more and more every day

It was those f*****g drugs he decided to take

“You can drink or smoke, but you can’t do both” his mother, my nana, said to him.

What did she know though, it wasn’t harmful at the time for her to say,

But I hate her too, she barges in my house for weed from my father, and still smokes every day.

But back to the thief.

Drugs corrupt people in the worst ways possible,

They turn you into demons.

Demons you can’t escape and once you try to escape them, they just pull you in deeper.

Sometimes when he leaves I just

Want to die, and want to cry. I get so angry I have tears streaming down my face

That I wipe away with clenched fists

But other times I want to kill him. Execute the main problem that my whole family faces.

People around school ask me, “Why don’t you smoke or drink? You’re no fun.”

I’d commit murder or suicide to honestly answer,

“I’ve seen how, first hand, those things bring you to the worst of places.”

But then they’d wonder how, and I’d have to explain

Could you picture having to tell this story again?

Over and over.

Everyone knowing my Dad is a waste-oid.

That should go over well on college applications.

Let’s bring it back to the roots of simplications,

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”-

What the hell is this implication?

Am I going to be just like him?

Hell

I sure hope not.

F**k hoping

F**k wishing

F**k floor vacuuming

F**k dish cleaning

Screw toilet scrubbing and all the other bullshit

I’m not taking the path of constant wrath and sin.

I know for a fact that I will NOT end up like him.

Reviews

[Elwyn]

This is my favorite poem by you so far. It must have been insanely hard to write and get this all on paper. Your emotions are completely raw and yet you sustained tact and rhythm throughout the entirety of this poem. The switching of perspectives, from third to first and vice versa, gives your poem multiple facets and voices. For example, in these lines (But anyways, no. Hold it together Kyle. You know what would happen if he left us alone?/ We’d have food on the table every night...) you go from first, to third and then to a "we" (which I think is considered first, but is still different from "I" obviously). In certain executions, these transitions could be difficult to read and follow but here, you wrote them flawlessly and the reader has no issue with deciphering what you mean. This poem is extremely personal, and it was very brave of you to share. By sharing this, anyone who reads it will take away a very strong message about drug use and what family means. I can guarantee that this is certainly not your future, and you have nothing to fear but the present.

[Cheyenne Delay]

This speaks out to me I lost my mother to drugs and to this very say it still hurts

[bringthestoke]

I'm sorry to hear that, love :/. I'm glad you could find some sort of connection to my writing, I hate that it's a bad connection though :(

[Cheyenne Delay]

Life happens it's sad but it helps finding a connection with one

[Gabrielle Linch]

All I have to say is wow. I mean just wow. It's like you can feel the tension and anger more and more as you keep reading. And that's very powerful. Not many people can make the reader feel actual rage. And I can relate to this as well. My dad doesn't use drugs but he does abuse alcohol, and to the point where he is abusive. There were times where he almost hit my mother and where he's dragged me and my sister by our hair and chased us around with a hammer. My mom was scared of him. So scared that every time she heard his voice she just wanted to throw up. Maybe that's why I love this piece so much, because the anger that I feel when reading it is because of my own father. And this line,

"People around school ask me, “Why don’t you smoke or drink? You’re no fun.”

I’d commit murder or suicide to honestly answer,

“I’ve seen how, first hand, those things bring you to the worst of places.” is probably my favorite. Because I don't like to participate in drugs and drinking because I've seen people lose everything because of it. They sold their soul to their addictions. And I don't want to end up like that.

[bringthestoke]

Let me start off with thank you so much!! You really grasped the idea of this poem, I don't even like to read it anymore, it's such a rough path. I understand your constant struggles and I can tell you that it'll get better. Thanks for reviewing this lovely :)

[Gabrielle Linch]

No, thank YOU, sweetheart. Thank you for being strong throughout all of that. You could've chosen a different, more harmful way to cope, but you chose to turn to writing. And that is amazing. Also, I understand why you wouldn't want to keeping re-reading this. I mean you even stated before hand that this was hard to even write, let alone live. And it does get better. It may take time, but it gets better. And of course, anytime! :)