Father or Merchant

My morality is corpse,

crawling with the parasites that are my own self-regard,

being ripped apart by the insatiable vultures that can't be anything

but what I once believed were necessities.

Things I thought were worth giving up anything for,

even my humanity.

I closed the lid on the coffin of characteristics,

the ones that defined me as human the moment my daughter's hand

left mine.

And we both suffered for it.

Her more than me.

Each night I would keep her warm,

Whispering to her stories meant to be told under a rooftop,

While tucking a child into a warm bed,

my chest her pillow,

the opening of my jacket her only blanket,

the ground our shelter,

and she would always smile this beautiful cheeky smile,

as if not caring about her status in the world,

I admired that,

I envy her strength now,

For each night I would feel as if I'm drowning in the

gutters of humanity,

and I was just holding her as my last breath,

but my lungs couldn't endure the pain forever.

Poverty was an unyielding warrior,

hunting us down,

stabbing us in our guts,

lost hope leaking from the wound as it puntures

our spinal cords,

paralyzing us in this state of misfortune.

My flesh gripping my bones,

its clutches tightening until they're visible on the surface,

Getting to where when I rubbed my hands over the parchment of my flesh,

It felt as if letters from death written in a brail of bones.

Warning me its arrival is nigh.

Retaliation seemed so necessary,

I took my daughter's 7 year old hands,

Knowing this would be the last time I felt them

And I sold her into being a slave,

A slave to the sexual desires of demons disguised as men,

My own daughter,

exchanged for currency I could only use to keep myself alive long enough

to suffer the brutality that comes everyday through the thoughts of my decision.

I now whisper the stories to myself at night,

the fact that they're now being told under a roof not helping them

feel any less out of place.

I sometimes still wear my jacket to sleep,

simply because it smelled like the moments I would hold her

as her memorable smile decorated her face.

I was supposed to be the man to hold her up,

but instead I've given "men" the opportunity to hold her down,

using her as the servant in their most twisted labors.

Her body their tool,

their door to their cravings and their unreal sense of pleasure.

The actions they must demand of her.

The images become persistent demons that torture my mind.

Seeing them holding her down,

her cries of shattered innocence falling upon deaf ears.

Their breath building up moisture on the back of her young neck,

the thought of them thrusting themselves inside of her adolescent anatomy.

Every detail my punishment

Hell is my new normality

I am the devil responsible

She is conquered each day by what call themselves men,

When really they are as far from human as I,

Whenever she displeases them,

She would spend her nights with a stomach full of nothingness,

Hating the bruised flesh she resides in.

The moment I gave her up I replaced my humanity with an hourglass full of blood.

Each drop causing me unspeakable pain,

Each second feeling like a lifetime,

Each day like an eternity,

So within a few months I have suffered enough to make starving to death seem almost

as pleasant as holding my daughter's hand again.

My hourglass reaching it's final drops,

My eyes became men at the gallos,

perspiring,

death clearly in them.

I took the memories of her smile,

the whispering of the stories,

and traded them for a gun.

The chambers filled with my unforgiveable decision,

my morbid morals,

and my survival instinct of self,

With the intentions of putting them all back where they came into existence...

my head.