When I was a little girl I thought my dad was a sailor always gone because he was chasing the horizon
I thought him to be a captain shaking salt water out of his long hair laughing into the sky with seagulls bobbing along in a ship surrounded by mates who held sunshine in their lungs too They gave each other silly nicknames because that’s what sailors did of course and all of them were fathers to children like me waiting impatiently at the front door with wonder in their eyes but my dad didn’t think much of myths as it turns out the docks were a place for men
with no melody in their hearts nor heart in their words no word they will keep men
who were born from generations of barnacles clinging to a pier of the only place they’ve ever known men
who have oil in their veins and roam the earth with open wounds staining everything they leave behind men
who walk on the ceilings of their homes shadowing each of their wives’ steps below them men who drink men who drink men who drink men who drink men
who kiss their children’s foreheads while they are sound asleep but leave a draft in the room that will drown them for years when
I was a little girlI thought my dad was a sailor I was too young to seehe was a ship in the night and
I was no lighthouse
my mom was no lighthouse
my siblings a family a home
were no lighthouse
Angel Leyba is a queer, Latina writer and creative from South Bay San Diego currently located in the Bay Area. They are the Managing Editor at Berkeley Poetry Review and a Reader at Frontier Poetry. Her words have appeared in City Works Literary Journal and Soft Quarterly. Find them on Twitter @xspacebar.