Originally published in the 2024 issue of the School of Liberal Arts Magazine

I called you on the phone today
rang you up cause I was down
I wish I called you up more often
I always want to hear the sound
of your voice singing happy birthday
so deep, the melody,
when you used to sing at parties
I just know the room would be caught up
standstill in a thrill
in awe of your beauty, as you’d work the room
your voice would bloom
in the heavens, they’d hear thee!
In my mind, I hear your soothing voice
I let it wash all over me
and when I’m kind I feel your soothing soul
a shining pearl that helps me be
the best version of myself — the Remi that you always see
the depths of where my soul resides, where it hides, and where it’s free.

We talked for hours like we always do,
a flood of love surging through our phones, you remind
me that love takes patience, that we need
to speak up to show up for the children
we once were and the children that we know
are growing up beside a father that I never got to know.

When I was their age, I’d call you up,
crying to you ’cause he’d scream
obscene insults, say it’s my fault he’s spitting
fire through his teeth. And as his eyes
were bulging from their sockets,
his sockets barely holding on, my heart
would sink into your hands — a puddle
filling up your palms. You’d calm me down
with that sound, la di dum di dum
di di, and then you’d ask me to forgive him
for the havoc that he’d wreak. I did my best
because you asked — said you’d talk
to him for me. But you cannot change what wants
to stay the same, locked away without a key.

We know this now (I think we always have),
and I’m proud to tell you that he no longer has the power
to take myself away from me.