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you want my daughter fine but give me
that alcohol said my dad at that moment

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died over and over back to back i
watched him as my mouth hung open the

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cackled licked his lips like i was meat
drooling while i drowned over and over

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on the echoes of my father's words i
could feel them crawling inside me

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burning the air was thick with smoke
stale liquor my own fear bitter on my

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tongue He looked me up and down like I
was fruit at a market, bruised, cheap,

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unwanted.

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My worth?

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A dollar, maybe less, seeing as I'd just
been traded for a bottle.

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I walked home, carrying Papa's bottle,
while trying to gather the scattered

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pieces of my soul, pieces that no one
seemed to care about.

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I was his.

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Mama had insisted I was his.

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She said it over and over, like a
mantra, like it made it right.

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She said I was his, so it was okay to
leave me with him while she chased

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pastures. She was suffocating in our
small village.

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She wanted to spread her wings, but she
couldn't fly with an alcoholic.

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He was too much for her. Her baby wings
would break, so she dumped him on me, a

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fourteen -year -old.

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I became her shadow, her replacement,
the one who carried the weight she

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couldn't bear.

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And yet, in all this, it's surprising,
really, that I survived.

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i mopped the floor he vomited on covered
him with a blanket when he passed out

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drunk on the tiles brought food from my
friend's home so he could eat when he

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was hung over i washed his vomit
-stained clothes listened to him ramble

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spilling nonsense into the night i had
to be fast on my feet watch every step

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he wouldn't fall on me when he stumbled
drunk i did all this all of it but none

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of it none of it heard as much as
hearing him say you can have daughter

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give me the bottle my papa might never
know how much those words broke me even

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though deep down i had always known that
to him the bottle came first the bottle

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came before me i had dared to hope it
wasn't true so hearing him say that i

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could be exchanged for the bottle with
such desperation that broke me because

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me my papa was always first