Written by: Allison Ballard

My narrow spine draws up
like a creaking cold floor
cornering confines, facing vacancy
While my father is as a sharp rain that
pounds down on my skin, grey tin
a shed to my life and its
sticky alcoholic stew
like a Jew, cemented sorrow 
and in my shoe, a dead furnace
It's better to be alive
but this reality's hard to wake up to
If my mouth was blue
and wore blood's debut
could be 
at least this day
before I cut my father's heart
in two.
But his tears reach me
even near my torrential eyes
and they burn clean like
acidic water's guise, my lies
fall away like flies
I have nowhere to hide
and I've certainly tried
I can only blink back
without excuse and cry
My father loves me fiercely, dearly
and clearly, my disease holds no hostage
he washes my toxic heart with cool hands
not an eye for the grime, but for me,
a child, marred by fire,
his very object of caution
but he makes me a wound
set to heal, so I kneel
awake in a wake
my father's grace.