My father was

I was seven when I first met my father,

His exile abroad beginning before my birth.

He seemed to be a giant, taller than the village gates,

waiting, I believed,  at the arrivals’ doors

to welcome us into his world of snow and ice.

He did not smile, led us straight out into the night,

the unlit chambers of his shuttered temple.

My father was a dark room in the cellar of a dark house, skinned within skins, no light of himself, his heart, allowed to seep out into the thick gloomed air. What did he think when he stepped from the wet street down the stairs to the boarded door, above which was painted, in bright pink lettering, the handiwork of the landlord’s daughter, “The Haven”, behind which his family cowered, afraid to look at his damp face? And behind which, no matter how many lights were turned on, how high the fire, it was always night, always cold.

My father was not a father; he was a prison, surrounded by prisons,

each as tall as him, each as dark,

their walls merging, arms wrapped around each other,

trying to keep themselves warm,

their fatherhood stifled

as they negotiated with the truth

of being strangers in an unwelcoming land,

chased through the gloamed streets,

dog shit smeared on their kicked in doors,

windows broken, taped and re-taped.

Through this he remained tall,

but inside, carefully shuttered, he was shattered,

spirit a shell, disconnected from his country’s blood,

a stranger to his wife and children.

My father was a dark room, into which he would drag us one by one, and we would emerge fractured, his monstrous hands smug, hydrants of hatred, as they smashed into our flesh, his whiskey breath cold, full of the absence of love. He lay among us afterwards, his scent of hawthorn infecting us with the plague, and we fearful of death, his fists quivering even as he slept, did not move despite the pain.

He is not here now.

We are safe.