She wanted to tell him~ By Shelby Thomas

She wanted to tell him
How her fingernails had become a symbol of her budding
Bisexuality;
Too long and too short all at once.
She’d say it as a joke
But he would know.

How her hair smelled of smoke -
A dirty lullaby on her pillow.
How she struggled to quit.
How she wondered if he still craved;
If the stale scent on her leather jacket spoke to him,
Bothered him, reminded him of tapping out packs
On his own palm.

If he knew his true heir
As she did.

She wished she could tell him
How men were and what they wanted
As if he didn’t know,
As if he wasn’t one.
How she had hurt or been hurt.
How their words were built against her
And all women.

But he was,
In his own way,
Only a man; impossibly entrenched,
Impossibly unable to understand. . .

She wished she could tell him
About late night road trips:
The speeding strips of pavement and
Blurred lines or blurred trees,
The empty truck stops with empty eyes,
The flannel, the burnt tired coffee,
Cigarettes and exhaust and coated bodies and gasoline. . .
And how she imagined his own rides
Long ago, through different mountains
With a different stereo
And if they were similar to this -
Excepting the clutch.

She wished for a moment in which
She was not his daughter
So she could speak with him as if she were.

Like how she remembered the nights of overwhelm,
Laying in the driveway watching stars fly.
How she wanted to ask if he felt that still - 
So small and so important -
Invested with transparent humanity.

She wanted to thank him for the gift.
Simple in its making, but
The only one that mattered.

How she had learned all her depth from him.

She wished she could tell him
The nights she screamed into her pillow
And silent, exhausted, fell crying to sleep.
Safe and full to sick or bursting,
That same love choking in her throat.
Remembering his beaming at her prodigal return
Which she would have named Failure.


Author Bio:
Shelby is a professional hobo writing poetry from the Maine woods.