bulletproof glass
Your mother said you cry
when they speak badly of me.
The only times I feel your presence
are in my dreams—
you speaking to my soul,
haunting me like a fever dream.
When you cried to my soul
with a divine little voice:
“Daddy, help please…”
'Twas some helpless nightmare of defeat—
filled with rage that ended in a bottle.
But, you are my life’s greatest feat,
wailing and celebrating,
playing my drunken tunes,
ear-pieced, thinking of you.
A woe man made by a woman
Drinking till my liver whispers
I wouldn’t live very long.
What’s greater than longing
to make my infant child smile?
Not reflexed, that pristine joy—
if I couldn’t walk through every mile.
You are the doorway to my paradise,
my baby—Rayana.
Before the doorway,
at the ward of fatherhood,
I had seen a million kids with disabilities—
and one Dillon,
a good dad,
about my age,
with quiet courage.
He lost her when I had you—
his baby Lynnon, will forever live on.
— In Memory of Lynnon Haze McCellon