The Eyes He Left Behind Poem by Charlene Lee

A boy cast out when the shadows grew tall,
Shipped away at the first sign of a brawl.
He drifted through life with no place to belong,
Where the walls of a prison became his dark song.
For crimes that were heavy, for deeds of the night,
He traded his freedom and walked from the light.

And as I grew up in the wake of his ghost,
The words of the others would haunt me the most.
'You're just like your father, ' they'd say with a grin,
Mapping his shadows onto my skin.
I ran from his footsteps, I fought to be free,
To kill off the part of him living in me.

He abandoned the story before it began,
A ghost of a father, the wreck of a man.
Yet I wake to the mirror, and there is the blow—
I look through the eyes that he gave me, I know.
The same shape of iris, the same heavy stare,
Searching for answers that never were there.

I wonder, while watching the world through his lens,
Where the cycle of breaking and bitterness ends.
But though I was built from the seeds that he sowed,
I am the one walking a different road.
He gave me the vision, the depth, and the blue,
But I choose the beauty that I'm looking through.