patricide | Teen Ink

patricide

January 22, 2022
By spittinwatches GOLD, Union, New Jersey
spittinwatches GOLD, Union, New Jersey
16 articles 0 photos 0 comments

Favorite Quote:
And I could imagine it—years, decades, maybe centuries down the line when my name is no more than an unmemorable myth and he has turned to bedrock, with nobody to worship him in the way I will.


in a home swam anger

borne from a father from his father from his father.

then came the daughter

fury flowing like an ocean,

ribs tucked with tumultuous love,

close to soft shores, nearly touching.  


she was not born to be her mother, touching

and tender. her stubborn veins filled with anger,

her small palms clashing destruction and love

together as she has been taught from her father.

she asked, “was this how it felt to drown in the ocean?”

lungs weighed with water, she was born to be wrath’s daughter.


might she have her own son or daughter,

the men before her have guided her to be touching

in the way that the vast, vicious ocean

overtook ships with bloody anger,

in the way an unforgiving father

will love.


rage dressed the same scarlet shade as love.

it made a wreckage of the daughter

who had nothing but windy sheets for a father.

it was almost touching

how much of a compass was anger,

how home washed up after spat out by the ocean.


can joy be found in this ocean?

love?

her burning heart only found anger.

there’s nothing else within the daughter,

or in the calloused touching

hands of a father.


her father

has set the ocean

on fire. what a touching

scene of love.

his daughter

watches beside him. ashes fly away, reminiscent of anger.


there was anger sleeping in the chest of a father

and his daughter drowning in his ocean

this was love, he reassured himself. their warm hands were touching.


The author's comments:

This poem is written in the style of a sestina, where the repitition at the end of each line is on purpose here. I wanted to combine the topic of generational abuse with the ocean.


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