it was a relief to learn
he wasn’t my father

a relief to know that my lines,
my raised and etched features
owe nothing to him.

he was violence and horror
that never filled the void,
and now simply a fading ghost;

better an unknown man
married with children
than that life-wrecking tornado.

and if i loved any part of him
it was the fabricated pieces
i cloaked him with in memory
now discarded and gone like him.

to replace a consuming black hole
with simple, earnest emptiness
is no bad thing in my quiet moments
as i reflect on a new lineage,
a line of Semitic survivors
that has led to father, me and mine

never let the dead rest,
they owe too much for that.