ba

people call me a pushover more than they say my name, judging me for my lack of confrontation or my need to get what they call closure.

what they don’t know, though, are all the times my dad pushed me over.

what they can’t answer is how a child is supposed to get up all on their own.

i spent only 16 years hearing my dad’s voice, yet somehow my heart still flinches each time, even when his voice is as soft as the wind.

somehow, the sound creeps into the cracks in my heart he made, and breaks it a little further.

somehow, his “i love you”s still sound like an argument.

my dad likes to be mad, so much so that he would always find a reason to do so.

he would yell about every insecurity that that i could never even verbalize 

until i realized it wasn’t that he knew my every insecurity, 

he made my every insecurity.

just like he tells me every day, he made me.

so why did he make me like this?

he hates to see me cry,

and in my head, it’s because of his ‘dad instincts’ that caused him to only scream as tears ran down my cheeks, choking me in the river that followed.

his ‘dad instincts’ caused him to scream louder as i continued to drown before i finally realized it wasn’t the tears i was drowning in but his screams.

i am a pushover.

i cling onto something, holding it as tightly as i possibly can, scared to let it go like a child is scared to let go of their dad’s hand,

until, eventually, i realize it pushed me away.

i was holding onto something that didn’t exist.

just as my father pushed me over, this poem stopped being about my dad.

it became a poem about ba.

Editors: Blenda Y., Luna Y.

Image source: Unsplash, Anubhav Arora