i want to kill him for what he did to me

“what do you want?”

i want him dead for what he did to me
i want his face to disappear from my town,
from my memories and my poetry
i want to write without washing the tears
off my skin, acting like rain on my cheeks,
watering flowers i loved with my own hands
i want to walk past that street and forget
my bike with its crooked seat, the fountain’s
water cooling my feet, the crickets at my ears
i want to think of my future wedding without a
pain in my heart, as if his hands are around it
clutching onto the train of my dress, dirtying it
with his nicotine nails and copper smell, my brother
throwing pennies instead of rose petals at my feet
i want him dead before my children erupt from me
do not want them to know the cigarette haze
in our kitchen, the bottle caps kept under the bed
i want my father to apologize through the crack
of the car window and then walk away to his
hole in the earth, instant coffee filling his grave
forgetmenots sprouting from his body in a few years
the sound of his screeching, halting funeral march
forgotten on the highway of my trauma
i want him dead for what he did to me
and i want to be the last thing he sees