Father used his fists a lot Though never on the kids
On the walls and the furniture and the doors and the mailbox and the fence and the neighbors and random people on the street and strangers in the bar and a few times the poor dog and one time on mother
He was the childhood’s villain
To defeat him one had to become a hero
and becoming a hero took time
And today after all this time the villain of childhood was dead
He died at the hands of some other character, a neutral one
A cop who told him to drop to the ground and father didn’t so he got shot
That was it The end of his saga
Utterly unsatisfactory anticlimactic disappointing just bad
There was no final showdown between hero and villain
because those things only happen in childhood and childhood had ended a long time ago
a songless bird
that would be the nicest
name she’d been
called
the others,
far more common,
being
that little wench
your bastard kid
the little rat
useless piece of shit that came outta you
and others
She liked the term
songless bird
It was a title worthy of her in
all the good and the
bad ways
The songless bird stands
locked in her room
and knocks and waves in
the window
for she has no voice to sing
She gives silent cries to the
neighbors and
the passersby when the noises
from the other side of
her door
get too violent
or when it smells
of smoke
Which happens
every now
and then
Daydreaming as a profession 