Dear Dad

by AF

Well, I know this isn’t to my dad, so I want to talk about him. I was named after him, and he was named after his dad, which makes me the third and him the junior. My dad showed me a pic when I was born. I was surrounded by hundred dollar bills and I never asked him where he got all that money. 

But as I grew up, I connected the pieces. My dad was in the streets, and I’m not talking about homeless. It’s exactly as it sounds. The streets. Man, when I was younger, I always blamed the streets for everything, and I still do. 

I blame the streets for everything I been through, so when I was younger, I never understood why my dad hung in the streets. I do now, but then I didn’t. Then, when I was about ten years old, I was playing with my friend at my apartment. We were passing this ball back and forth, and I didn’t catch it, so it rolled on the side of the apartments, and I went to go get it. 

I look up and there was my dad with a needle in his arm. I dropped the ball, and I walked up to him. I thought he left because my mom and dad got into a fight and he left. That’s why I was out there waiting for him to come back. But I found him. Anyway, I walk up to him and I hugged him so hard like it was the last time. 

As I was hugging him, I can’t get that feeling out of my head – of his muscle twitching. Mom came looking for me. After two hours, she found me and my dad. She ran up to me and dad. 

Well, we were on the floor and she grabbed me and closed my eyes as she turned me around and my mom took the needle out of his arm and unwrapped it. She grabbed me as if we were going to leave him and cried to my mom, don’t leave him out here, he’s sick. And he’s only gonna get worse. 

So, my mom dragged him into the house, on the couch and covered him with a blanket and sat there and watched him at night. We had a PS2 that I always used to play all night, but that day I didn’t even care about it. The next day he woke up and didn’t know what happened. 

Only me and mom knew. I thought it would be better if my brothers and sisters didn’t know, so I kept it to myself. My dad did the same thing the next day, but he got arrested and for a long time. Like two years. 

But when he got out, he was sober and him and my mom were happy again. And it was one of them days where we all fell asleep in the living room, watching movies until we fell asleep. And my uncle was running from the cops, and he had jumped in the house through the window, and the cops came in and arrested my dad again. 

That’s when I started to show hate for law enforcement officers, because they keep taking my dad away. And when I was finally happy, is when I got a lot of messed up shhh I got to work out, yet it feels good writing about it. But it will be better if I talk about it.