I woke up today to a child’s laughter:

a father singing off-key to his daughter

coaxed joy from her tiny throat till it spilled

forth in bubbly sounds. It reminded me of

the void in my life: my only child died

in the womb shortly after conception. I rose

to ecstatic heights, only to crash and burn

in a cocaine-fueled pity-party that carried me

from my wife’s warm embrace to a frigid

Euclid steam vent in the midst

of a Cleveland winter. Tanqueray tears

stained my cheeks, heroin laced blunts

dulled my pain, but it was through crack fellatio

in project stairwells and abandoned apartments

that I succeeded in my quest to self induce

a psychic lobotomy. I learned how to forget me!

And in forgetting, I became anesthetized to

the cancer devouring my soul. Eviscerated

and disemboweled, I was empty, hollow,

a marionette dancing in a Shakespearean tragedy

being directed by the Marquis de Sade.

I’ve played with razor blades, swallowed

handfuls of colorful pills in defiance of their

supposed lethality, and all I have to show for it is

a scarred mind, a bruised spirit, and

a better understanding of my capacity for self-abuse.

It’s hours later and I can still hear the little girl’s

carefree laughter. I’m sitting with a fifth of

Bombay Sapphire, a bottle of 750’s¹, and a healthy

disdain for life—my life. Then, I see my child,

little Lateefa Kareema, who has somehow survived

the chemical cesspool she was conceived in.

Now I hold her, light as a sigh following

a climax, as she utters, “Da-da, da-da.”

My tears are pure, as crystal as the mist

falling on an Andean rain forest, spilling

from my eyes like a swollen Pontchartrain overflowing

its levees. When I blink them away though, I see

that it’s not my Lateefa I am holding, but

the laughing child, now grown silent and fearful

as her father reaches for her and takes her,

turning my void into an ever deepening chasm.