Chair Hooks

For a few years there, my father wouldn't look me in the eyes.

I cried every day, and he would turn his head away

back to stirring the oatmeal I'd learn to associate with love,

back to watering the flowers that no longer smelled of life.

He looked at me like I was prone to shatter,

His screams morphing into dead silence and shifting glances.

Once, I would've been overjoyed to be clear of the weight of his expectations,

but relief couldn't settle while I was filled with despair.

He used to tell me he only yells because he can,

because I'm his daughter and not a stranger.

And maybe that taught me the wrong lesson --

    that men who love me will hurt me --

but it doesn't change the fact that when his harsh discipline stopped,

I wasn't ready to be a stranger.

One day, we went to Ikea.

I was raised a baniya; I could look at something and tell you how much it weighs and costs.

I saw these small wall hooks that looked like dining table chairs and laughed.

How ridiculous and overpriced. My father bought them anyway. 

Which is to say that my father's love sometimes feels like duty stirred into a habit-water solution.

Later, I became one third of a golden friendship,

one I was convinced would last the rest of my life,

so when we got into different colleges, I didn't dwell on the sadness.

Instead, I tore open the chair hook plastic, and split my most precious possession in three:

one for you, one for you, one for me. 

It was a promise that we would share an apartment in five years,

    because we would have to stay friends to reunite the hooks,

and that must mean that we are who we say we are. 

It was my father's formula dissolved in my blood, emanating outwards.

It was how I loved-- at the expense of myself, in every way that matters, 

just like he taught me.

And I don't know where those chairs are right now, which teaches me more about my dad than he ever did.

These days, my dad looks at me normally again.

I'm more scarred than I let on, but so is he.

I break down over abortion rulings (even the good ones) because

how dare we win on the backs of dead women that could so easily be me?

I don't hand out chair hooks as easily, which is both a blessing and a curse.

I think I'll never recover and then I'm reminded I have nothing to recover from;

just oatmeal I once didn't want to eat and chair hooks I didn't want to own,

friends I didn't think would leave, forcing to confront the sadness of it all on the way home.

I don't want to create a life I'm constantly trying to escape from, 

but I'm no longer so sure I have a choice.

And I can't quite look this truth in the eyes. 

- on generational trauma, and becoming the reflection of someone's worst nightmare