How to Take a Punch

Finger paint of memory dips my ego in the knowledge

I was once eleven

The crack of puberty

I see the riptide in my daughter

There are moments in life that teach you how to take a punch

Most of the act is not endurance or breathing elongated

To hold for an aperture to reciprocate a blow or

To charge that inflicted pain like a torpedo

Annihilating vessels upon open waters

The punch is taken by ceasing to connect oneself to

Before or after the moment of impact 

However at the instance one is fully present

The sensation of energy transferring from the pugilist to the pummeled

Collides in waves received with understanding

Empathy and consciousness that the body pressing into one’s skin

Is the one in pain, one can either accept this inseparable mathematic

And find healing in the very act of being punched

Or one can find flecks of vengeance, resentment, anger, self-pity, or denial

In dispersed strands of pain tightening tendons panicking for a remedy

As one attaches what transpired or will to where one is  

Daughter told me I am not ready to watch PG-13 movies

But mommy said at eleven I could tell the judge what I want

I want to be with my family, not here I do not like it here

I have been trying to get ready to tell you.  I want to leave.

A locked door, refusal to eat, an elevated temperature and influenza symptoms

Daughter claims she reads the books here to bear the hours

Used the words cloud of depression everywhere her father goes

Rip a father’s heart, yank arteries, show him the pump

Old verbiage recollecting a mother in law

A five year old’s words about punching a pillow to pretend it is the judge

That makes you go with daddy

Before bedtime, “Mommy said, ‘Daddy only pretends to love you.’”

How does one love a person?

They tell you they want nothing to do with you anymore.

They punch you.

How you react is how you love a person.

Do you want what is best for them: happiness, to feel safe, to feel love.

Even though you may never see them again or less or

Be able to converse in a way that feels commensurate

With what you offer, they take, and you greet each blow with a blessing

Ignoring another human being is a form of abuse

One a daughter can learn from a mother

Father thinks of a courtroom he fought slander so he could see his progeny

Lies in a strawberry town to push him out, the acid lips and borax tongue

Take the punch and let it be; give the prize money back

For it is a fool’s currency of the mad

Build a raft and hope for a horizon

Row back to visit the youngling; take her on trips to your island

May she learn folk songs, jazz, stories of wizards and dragons

Prepare her the crustaceans and swine, sugar and bed sheets

To dream under street light moons to navigate werewolf alleys

Readying to stare midnight in the jowls for the day fathers have to let go

How does one love a person?

You give them your branches, trunk, and roots

You tie your being into a raft and sail them back on your belly

A place that feels like home to them perdition to you

For in love there is no possession

Not even for a father of a daughter

Genetics, identity, longing to hug blood and shared name

These are illusions of want for the punch, to dwell in the thump

Knuckle to skull purple

There is only letting be

For an image without face

Loving nameless wholly absolute in the moment of now