Not all legacies are good.
When I was a kid,
One day,
(I was 14).
Well, that day my dad
Well he got real mad,
In fact he got enraged.
And somehow or another,
Mistook my face for a punching bag.
Sullen teenage girl, I slammed my bedroom door shut.
I had no idea what was coming.
I heard footsteps pounding.
“Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!”
My heart raced like the terrified little rabbit that I was.
My father flung open my bedroom door and slammed his fist into the right side of my face, right on the jaw.
So hard he literally knocked me off my feet.
24 years later the physical pain of that incident is starting to rear its ugly head.
My jaw is so sad, broken, in pain all the time.
The chiropractor tells me my father displaced the first cervical vertebrae in my neck.
“Oh.” I say.
“Is that why…
“The weekly debilitating migraines for the past 17 years?”
“Yes.”
“The ear aches?”
“Yes.”
“Wait, then, the hearing loss too?”
“Yes.”
“The stabbing nerve pain?”
“Yes.”
“The inability to bite properly?”
“Yes.”
I sit, numb in shock with the news,
feeling like that lost little 14 year old girl again.
Wow. Thanks dad.
What a wonderful legacy.
You son of a bitch.
– Christina Conroy
© 2015, poem, Christina Conroy, All rights reserved
The BeZine 