Indelible
He didn’t know how to be a father,
he hadn’t had one of his own.
Writing wasn’t a choice,
words kept falling out of his pocket like loose change in the wash.
He would take his baby for car rides in the middle of the night,
so she would sleep.
Words would rattle around in his mind,
popping out at sunrise.
He made her a play kitchen from scrap wood and
dropped glitter covered laminated notes in her lunch.
He’d juggle phrases, commas, and stanzas until they all fit.
Damn poems are never finished,
they always change again later.
He did not know if he’d made an impact,
if it mattered.
He spoke to her in pictures, photographs, lyrics, and paint.
He didn’t know if the words, notes, and I love you
tucked into her lunch next to the sandwich with the crust cut off
brightened her day.
He watched her grow up.
He taught her how to drive.
He could only sit and watch,
as he held back the screams
for fear of where they were headed.
Then, one day, he heard his voice in hers.
The dry satiric ironic rye.
It caught him off guard,
there he was,
his own self, sitting beside him.
Seeing her eyes shine as his had shone.
An inside joke,
she’d become her own person,
and taken over,
she would write her own words now.
He’d keep working on his story,
with words that fell out of his pocket,
twisting them, stretching them, kneading them,
knowing now,
the words would never be finished.
Addison was raised hippie and spent his formative years in a leaky log cabin in Oregon. His work represents the misfits, characters, and beauty of the Pacific Northwest. He performs his work at spoken word venues throughout the Northwest. He has been featured in Emeralds in the Ash, The Baseball Bard, The Zest of the Lemon, Tap into Poetry, Wax on Poetry, and on Hollow Earth Radio.
DIY MFA 