When my mom forgives my father

I envision him empty at a table spread out like the glitter my sister left in the grains. The broken leg he always forgot to fix slightly off kilter. I see him amidst papers he forgets to read. Word Finds he forgets to mark. He’s lost track and the words seem never-ending. He sends me another online puzzle over snapchat at two A.M. like he’s asking for forgiveness from a stranger. A daughter far removed from the dishes left in the sink and the dust creeping under the door. Ask for my permission. Beg for my attention. If being angry gets me nothing, why does it taste better than forgiveness? We’re in a car, together again, driving to the West Coast, a trip I had pleaded for two years ago. I must scream for him to put his phone down. We steep in the silence neither of us breaks. He doesn’t know how often I see car crashes in my mind while he spits his hundredth sunflower seed in an empty can of mountain dew. I imagine his death like a fast crash of sodium and soda but still bring a twelve-pack to the wake. 

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When finding your father’s porn

Don’t be ten. Don’t be ten and too young to know what you’re looking at. Forget that you think the naked woman is a woman you could know. That this makes her evil. Don’t think about how long you’ve been looking at the potentially evil woman’s body. Don’t think. Count the pixels on the flip phone you regret snapping open. Count the tiny frames and fragments so you never forget thinking your father is cheating. You learn “cheat” before “porn”—it’s a burden you never thought to consider. Now you know. It feels heavy like the fat stacked TV that lives in your parents’ room that is just another thing you shouldn’t look at but do. You learn not to look through phones. You learn not to trust your father. It’s a lesson you wish you had remembered for later. 

Olivia Mettler is an alum of Minnesota State University, Mankato. She is currently a graduate student at Florida Atlantic University pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing with a focus in poetry. Olivia spends her free time complaining about driving in South Florida and pretending she can talk to birds.

A Song for Olivia