To The Woman Who Married My Father Poem by cassidy Lovato

You entered quietly
and called it grace.
No questions.
No reaching.
No pause to ask
where I stood
when you stepped into my life
and rearranged it.

You wanted order,
not connection.
Control,
not communion.

You wore religion like armor
and judgment like perfume
light enough to deny,
strong enough to linger.

You scolded a girl
for becoming a mother at eighteen
as if love had an age requirement,
as if sacrifice needed your permission.
You never praised what I built.
You never honored what I carried.

And you never knew
how deeply I knew you.

You spoke of purity
while burying your own truth.
You preached doctrine
with hands that had already chosen
what mercy looked like for 'you.'
Funny how absolution sounds
when it's self-issued.

I watched you endure him.
I watched you shrink beside him.
I listened when you whispered
that you feared for your life—
that one day he might take you out back
and end it.
Those were your words.
No stutter.
No metaphor.

I believed you.

And still—
when it mattered—
you chose him.

You chose the man
who tore you apart in public,
who drank until cruelty felt casual,
who humiliated you
in front of children
while everyone else stayed quiet.

Everyone
except my husband.

That should have told you something.

I asked you once, just once,
for discretion.
For time.
For respect.
You gave me none.

You handed my news to him
before I could speak it myself
and called it concern.
You called it love.

It was betrayal.

When we left,
you called yourself the victim.
You wore grief publicly
and accountability never.
You spoke my mother's name
with venom you didn't earn,
borrowing lies from the very man
who once told me
she was the only woman
he ever truly loved.

That part,
I believe.

Because love recognizes love.
And loyalty recognizes loyalty.

You checked on me once,
years later,
during a storm.
I answered kindly.
Not because you deserved it,
but because I refuse
to become what hurt me.

Do not mistake my silence for ignorance.
Do not mistake my absence for forgiveness.

We are not estranged.
We are buried.
By your choice,
by his words,
by years of standing beside harm
and calling it marriage.

You chose the devil you knew.
I chose my children.

If one day you read this,
know this:
I remember everything.
And I am no longer afraid
to say so.

Just know,
I will never apologize
for surviving the house
you helped make unbearable.