Tough Love,

Mar 9

Written By Micah Hill

my father says:

anything that happens at home stays.

trapped inside

Newport-stained ceilings,

caught underneath a red hand print illustrated by my lighter complexion.

The family tree where tough love roots itself through fear.

Stay—

like the head

of the family who needed devoted limbs to ground the trunk;

how domestic disputes never seemed to

fall

too

far from the

tree of tough love.

They never seemed to snap under pressure anyway.

The only time they gave way was by

investigation and interrogation;

silent sterile stations where strange trees go to die,

where the truth seemed thicker than blood—

because the truth stays.

My father says:

You’re a problem child.

It seems we treat brown boys as problems before people,

snip until leaves feel

institutionalized.

A family tree where

boys who look like me

grow up wrapped around its

branches like a

swing—

bruised,

broken down and strange

after all of our fruit has been taken.

This is love;

at least that’s what my father says.

Father : Time