Broken Boy
R. Nikolas Macioci


How carefully my father drank booze.
He was a fastidious, weekend drunk,
riumphant in drowning loneliness.
My parents deserted each other long before
divorce. The child of a disconnected
Mom and Dad, I rotted with guilt,
wanted to fix everything. I forget
the woman's name I caught my father with,
while Mom hid her own version
of desertion.
I felt defeated in my world
of Barthman-Avenue concrete,
trudged streets, alleys, pawed through
other people's trash. The eight-year-old poet
in me salvaged a plastic butterfly
from a rusted barrel, added it to
my collection of talismans to protect
against family uncertainty.
They altered nothing.
My parents couldn't see
how home killed me, catapulted me
into a chasm caused by their separation,
a canyon of discontent that, even as an adult,
I can't climb to the edge of.
It was a hell of a way to raise a child.