By Kendra Whitfield

-after Chris Abani

It has taken me forty years to understand:
You wanted to go as much as we wanted you gone.
There is no shame in truth.
Only in the lies we tell to make others less uncomfortable.
I haven’t slept through the night since your body was found –
I awaken precisely at the moment the officer rang the doorbell.
I used to toss until summoned by an alarm
But now I just roll over and fade back into oblivion.
It has taken me forty years to understand
Forty years of Scotch and therapy and futile relationships with inappropriate men.
Forty years of meditation and medication and running into whatever arms would hold me.
Forty years of confusing promiscuity for worth.
It has taken me forty years to understand:
I set you free that night, father.
Forty years of thinking you abandoned me
When, really, I abandoned myself on that bridge
Forty years later I’m still falling