Memoir of a Tragedy

The following is a real experience, and really not dramatized all that much. Every aspect is true, the details, the questions, and the feelings. You might have noticed that in most of my poems, I snivel and exaggerate and make up emotions and experiences. But this one is true, every last bit, and nothing is made up just for poetic fluff. It just happens to be the type of emo macabre I like to write about, and as an added bonus, it's real this time.

Through the dark of my memories
Like a dream
Caught, before it slips away.
I remember, in perfect clarity.

I remember a kitchen
Clocks ticking on the walls
Like my heart, beating ever slower.
"Let's go." he said.

Through the car window
I could see the night
My cheek rests on the glass
And my tears mingle with the rain outside
Making blurs of the streetlights as they fly by.

I can't believe I never saw it coming
I should have known.
Every night, they would argue
Thinking I was asleep
Yet I lie awake
Listening by the stairs
Pretending it wasn't real.

Maybe, at nine, I was too innocent
Looking back, I see now it's better that way.
And I feel so guilty, thinking that.
I feel like I'm betraying my dad
Who tried so hard to make it work.

It robbed me of my memories.
I can't see them together anymore.
My brain erased all the happy times.
Sometimes I think it's to protect me.
Or maybe there were no happy times.

Known forever as The Divorce.
My dad spiraled into depression.
I had to grow up.
Grow up and take care of him.
And now he won't let me go.

My grandma -
Always telling me how horrible she is, my mom.
Saying how I'm just like her
I really am her daughter.
And the way she says it
I feel dirty and ashamed.

Was it my fault?
I should have been less selfish
Listened more, done my chores
Not have asked for so much at Christmas.
Done more.
Anything more.
So much more.

Because this is a scar that won't heal.
I've become a messenger between the two.
They can't stay friends.
Can't even talk to each other.

My dad still loves her.
At the end of the day, he still dies a little inside.
Soon there won't be anything left,
He's just a shell as he is.
At least he doesn't drown his sorrows in whiskey anymore.

I remember a soccer game
Where my dad almost lost it.
He had a club in his hand.
And HE was there, laughing, jeering.
He could have used the club.
If not for me.
He said he couldn't go to jail and leave me fatherless.

But I remember HIS scornful laugh.
HIM. Tony.
As he sneered through the fence.
Laughing at us.

No more.
We never speak of it.
It was all a big mistake.
Over and done with.

So all I have left are my few memories.
And this poem.
And a wedding picture hidden in my desk drawer.