Daddy
didn’t know how to say it,
didn’t know how to do it,
Daddy didn’t know how to ask it,
but Daddy knew how to break it,
like it broke before, like they
broke him before, like they beat him
to the floor
and the butterfly flaps his wings
in confusion in the garden
they covered in concrete
when they couldn’t afford
the flowers to decorate it.
Daddy
didn’t know how to do it,
how to show it, how to feel it,
and then they thought
he didn’t need it,
cause she didn’t need it,
not then, not later, not after,
not from him who frowned at laughter
and the butterfly snaps her wings
in the back yard that’s soon to be
a cracked yard and she blames him
for all that went wrong as if
she’d never asked him
for anything, ever.

And they’re both
high on lies
in the back yard,
flapping and snapping
and wondering how this all happened.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly