because i will never be able to love a woman in the way that a man could
my heart hungers for that love.
i don’t want to inflict my own neurosis upon a child
but i want to have an opportunity to reincarnate myself.
i want to be a father
a father teaches a child how to navigate the world
a mother tends to a child’s wounds
when he inevitably trips and falls
following the path to manhood.

i want to look down at the face of a laughing baby and see little reflections of my own smile in his, to know that he is, in a way, a fragment of me - but the fragment of me that he possesses will have a chance to start anew.

i’m a boy and a man and a girl and a child
i can be whichever one you please depending on what’s convenient
i’m a matryoshka doll of my experiences
i’m a jawbreaker
i never really matured
i just held on to that anger - put it in storage - hoped that i would make use of it someday

i want to believe
in a better world
but i don’t think i can
whoever promised me that someday it won’t hurt anymore lied
and it hurts to be helped
because i don’t want to believe that there’s anything wrong with me

i thought i would get used to the constant ache but i find myself ripping open the same old scars
over and over
fuck me
that stings

it kills me to watch a mother cry
snot ridden strawberry face juxtaposed with the footage
“he wasn’t raised this way”
but no one is raised to rape
maybe to hunt for sport at most
there’s nothing you can do
if you teach a boy to hate he’ll listen
if you teach a boy to love he’ll hate anyways just to spite you

sometimes i doubt myself
but when i look at you
i feel secure in my decision
you help me remember why i do what i do
and in your desperation i will help you to understand
exactly why
i never became

A F A T H E R
F A T H E
A T H
T