Jessica Henderson: "Daddy Issues Die Hard"

Daddy Issues Die Hard

People sometimes go to Niagara Falls and jump,
commit suicide I mean. My first memory of you is a yellow shirt and useless
noise on the tv. It’s a soft brown sofa and a warm Summer day.
When I think of you, I think of a cherry red car and gravel;
of a purple face and a bottle of pills; of the realization that my five-year-old pleas
meant nothing.
 
It’s fall leaves on a green slide, a new and flat adventure;
nights where I would jump from the bed and dance along to a song about Fridays.
I remember the scent on the pillow,
the way darkness made me feel afraid.
I’m not sure when I became frightened of fireworks,
staring up into the sky and pretending
the arrangement of colors floating above me
was worth the pain inside.
 
And I recall the feel of strings between my fingers, the hardness
of maroon chairs and the smell of morning glories. It’s funny, to me,
how the flavor of a funeral home seems to be perfume and stale crackers.
As a kid, I expected the bodies to rise from their box, grab my hand
and whisper through their stitched mouth for me to fall.
 
My first memory of you is the sound of rushing, the aroma of bitter sweet
and the feeling of collapsing. When I think of you, I think of Niagara Falls.

---

Jessica Henderson is a Volunteer Coordinator for Court Appointed Special Advocates. She has had poems published in Water Soup Winter Two Thousand and Fifteen. She received a BA in Criminal Justice and a BA in Creative Writing at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, but she currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico where she writes in her spare time.