Nostalgia

He said
my parents were the shit
I knew what he meant
Still I tried to abort a pregnant pause with tired jokes of
how over here
the shit means something good
and you better get with it nature boy
I don't
i can tell i'm walking on a knife's edge
and i'm too scared to breathe
it wasn't what he said
it's what he didn't
i found myself falling down the rabbit hole in between the gaps of words
where dad
makes me taste copper and chipped teeth
nerves hammered dead by callous fists
slicked with blood
he would joke of how the bastard cut that out when he got the dentist bill
i don't laugh
i'm still in la-la land
where belt buckles slice through tense air
and exposed skin
just the same
gives a whole new meaning to the parting of the Red Sea
and there's nothing i can do about it
and it's killing me
but there's nothing to be done for past wounds healed
I just write poems
and there are no homonyms to make this just a bad dream
no synonyms that are proof of an alternate universe
i can't build stanzas fast enough to block off your past
the best I can offer is my open arms
my weak, open arms