PERSON Poem: Lint Trap, by Amelia Eakright

I live in a house designed to accumulate filth,
A lint trap for my fathers depressive episodes that never gets emptied,
A house that seems suspicious when cleaned.
More of a circus performance than anything when it’s in its best state.
Something that I know is fleeting and a sweet lie, a dream, a fantasy.

I’ve always thought it better to be honest,
Or at least that’s what my father told me.
But at this point all of his lessons seemed burdensome,
Especially when accompanied by the bitter guilt that consumes me when I
remember our long talks.
Sometimes he was a bit too honest.
For as smart of a man as he was, he certainly liked to pretend he didn’t know what
he was doing.

But he liked to paint a picture.
He was always better, smarter, wiser than me,
And I always tried to fill his shadow.
I wanted nothing more than to be like him,
To paint my face white with a wide lipstick smile.
I loved him.
Overwhelming loved him.

Loved him so much it hurt.
Loved him so much that I hated the part of me that hated how much I loved him.
Loved him so much that it made it all the easier for him to use that against me,
For him to distance himself so he could always be better.
I’d go crying to him about feeling less than, insecure, worried that I’d never be half
the man he was.
He’d tell me that he’d hate to say that he was proud,
Because it seemed condescending, in a way.
But he said he was proud,
And loved to brag about the parenting that led me to where I am today.

Tears would flow down my face,
Fueled by the belief that I would never be able to properly acknowledge
everything he’s done.
By thinking he was the most caring person I had ever met,
The kindest,
The strongest.
He was my idol,
My role model,
My muse, in a way.
He could do no wrong in my eyes.
Which made it all the more difficult to justify the sinking feeling in my chest when
he would break that pedestal we both put him on.

He always told me “it’s best to be honest”.
Though honesty has its limits,
And honesty has its prices.

I was always afraid to be honest around him,
Because every moment I felt one step away from hours of lecture in response.
Him teaching the ‘principles of life’,
Giving me lessons.
Telling me about the horrors of his childhood,
And raising his voice about the terrors of today.
Reaching over boundaries to pull me closer, as if he could bridge the gap in maturity.

I was afraid to ask for anything,
Though he always assured me that I could.
But he never meant it.
And he proved that time and time again.

He always said I could rely on him,
Though I never could,
Which is spoken by the memories of hours waited for him to fulfill his promises.
The hours spent slouched with exhaustion and worry about homework,
As he spoke at me about the nuance of everything little thing I did wrong with my life.

The days spent with anxiety, and trepidation to go back,
Worrying if he was going to punish me for one thing or another.

Weeks spent, realizing that this was not how a father should be.
Weeks spent crushing my soul and everything I looked up to.
Weeks spent questioning what it really meant to be a good person,
Because it certainly wasn’t him.

The years spent waiting for lecture to stop,
For him to tell me I had learned enough.
Years spent watching his expectations change,
As I flip, cartwheel, and somersault in hopes of meeting them,
In hopes of preventing him yelling again,
Of him resenting me,
Of him leaving me.

And maybe I did learn something from you,
And maybe I did become a better person,
But it was learnt through lessons of gluing myself back together after you tore me
apart.

To my father, I hope that you don’t kill yourself like you said you would all those
years ago.
Here’s another work of prose for you.
You always said I would be a writer,