CALL ME BELOVED

If you’re going to drag the kids to restaurants,
force them to learn all your martini orders
through sheer force of repetition while they leave
Goosebumps books and stuffed animals behind
in booths, filling marble notebooks with chapters
about braver people and better days –

If you’re going to make them read their story
out loud, maybe listen to more than a page
before interrupting – I used the word “hate,” you see –
one transgression too great for a seven-year-old,
punishable by public lecture until shame shrank me
blanched bone white as the paper tablecloth –

You said the only thing I “hate” is that word,
and that you wrote it, and
I don’t want to hear more.
Don’t worry, dad.
I shut the notebook –
it didn’t open again.

If you have to drive home drunk – was it
that night? We ate there so often, and
you drank so much – you thought the gas pedal
emphasized a point, but you were really just
weaving through stop signs and traffic lights,
engine accelerating to match your tone –
I used to count the poles, going home,
wondering which night I wouldn’t
make it to the end

If you had to dispense those little lectures,
dictator speeches where you’d recite some advice
mangled and misremembered – you thought
you were offering me lessons, but what you
really handed me were daggers, and dad,
I took them. I took every one.
I plunged them inward.

If I had to offer the man my own piece of advice –
if you’re going to ask me something, then listen.