He promised to take my hand but had eternities of lies behind those emerald eyes, our future just another castle, built of opium-laced sand
Poison can be so sweet, so beautiful, and he was a subtle toxin meant to impair, to deceive, to make me see what he wanted me to see, but could never be, our storied cotton candy love tale, our children, our grandchildren from a future that only lived in the most brutal of places, a hell of his creation, illusions and secret aces, here and there, truth nowhere
The only daughter we ever conceived died before we would ever meet her
What else could come from such a man, an illusion even to himself, more willing to live a lie than face the mother of his child and future wife
But, oh! He already had one of those, undisclosed (and a few more on the side)
Is love really love if it is just lies masquerading as it?
What did he know of love? My daughter was lucky to never have known him, been held by him, known, heard his rage, born witness to his confounding, terrifying fits & turns
Spared was she of the legacy of any caged bird
She'd have turned 18 this year
Sometimes, for an Other-Side second, I think "what would she do with her father's abuse of her mother?"
I'd hope she'd have left it with me, though even the best mothers can't provide that kind of shield, nor order such a command from such a mighty love
No. I think of her and am grateful she never knew the pain I did, likely a daughter's greatest cross, or sorrow. Though I still cry for her, wish I never knew the empty sorrow of losing her, mercifully, my never did not become her...forever, likely scarring her in ways for which I would never have forgiven myself. Ever.
I would have taken a thousand emerald-eyed "hims" to have spared her a lifetime of...him.
For my Willow