my father was a coin toss

heads: he sang me to sleep. tails: he left bruises on the walls.

there are houses
that teach you how to stay small.
how to measure footsteps,
how to lower your voice
until it fits inside someone else’s mood.
my house had walls that held their breath
and i learned to do the same.

love wasn’t soft in my house.
it was a shifting thing
a weather pattern,
a worn-out ritual,
a language that changed its pronunciation overnight.
but it was still love,
wasn’t it?

i was raised by contradictions.
a father who taught me to throw my head back when i laughed
and duck when he reached too fast.
a mother who taught me to speak softly
until the silence between us became the loudest thing in the room.

they loved me in languages i had to translate.
in apologies that never came,
in door frames slammed sideways,
in bruises explained as accidents
and jokes made too soon.

some nights,
my mother braided my hair 
like i was her masterpiece
she was learning how to finish.
she called me her miracle, her baby, her reason.
whispered that i was her everything.
and her voice was honey.
sweet. thick. stuck in my throat.
and for a second,
i believed i was safe.

other days,
her silence boiled over.
the air got thick.
no thunder 
just
a pressure drop.
she slammed the same drawer three times
and i learned that tone
matters more than words.

some mornings,
my dad was the sun.
funny, warm, the life of every room.
he’d teach me how to draw a lion,
how to dance in the kitchen,
call me his whole heart
(like his voice had never torn through a wall)
(how to forget for five minutes
what he’d said the night before.)

other days,
he was a time bomb in a button-up shirt.
the kind of man who could smile while shouting.
who threw remotes, bottles, knives.
(my father was a coin toss.
heads: he sang me to sleep.
tails: he left bruises on the wall.)
he said it was because i left the light on.
i was eleven, and suddenly guilty
for taking up space.
it was my fault for asking too much.
i should’ve known better.

i learned to say sorry
like it was a form of self-defense.

my mother watched
like a ghost tied to the room.
she withdrew inward,
the way people pull coats tighter in storms.
tightened like a jar no one could open.
when she didn’t approve,
she didn’t speak.
not to him.
not to me.
(i once went three days
trying to earn the sound of her voice again.)
her silence was a weapon,
sharper than anything he ever threw.

i became the translator.
the peacemaker.
the daughter-as-glue.
i pulled two broken adults to the table
and begged them to speak
it was my fault they were fighting, right?
(i know now they needed therapy)
(but it’s not their fault)
(generational trauma)
(but that’s another poem)
as if words alone
could unbreak a home.
i’d sit them down like i was the parent
and they were children
who didn’t know how to love without hurting.

and yet
they loved me.
that’s the hardest part to tell you.
they really did.
tucked me in.
praised my test scores.
kissed my forehead like it meant something.
and sometimes,
it did.

how do you explain
that the same man who bruised you
also bought you ice cream
just because you seemed sad?
that the same woman who wouldn’t look at you for days
once held your hand during a nightmare
and didn’t let go?

how do you say:
i love them
and they hurt me
and both things are true
and neither cancels the other?

it’s whiplash.
being wanted and wounded
in the same breath.
being raised by a weather system
with no forecast
sunlight that scorches.
hail in june.
you learn to carry an umbrella
even when the sky is blue

i got in trouble for things that didn’t make sense.
not smiling fast enough.
closing a door too loudly.
breathing wrong.
forgetting to read the atmosphere
before entering the room.

and still
i catalogued the good days
like evidence.
they didn’t hit me every day.
just hard enough
that i learned to walk softly.
to read faces like forecasts.
to pack an umbrella for their moods.

maybe if i kept a record
the pancakes, the museum nights,
the rare apologies
the one day she told me
she liked the way i think.
that im a good writer.
like proof
it wasn’t always bad.
that i wasn’t crazy
for still wanting to go home.

because if i could collect enough good,
maybe it would outweigh the rest.
maybe it would make me easier to love,
more worth staying soft for.

sometimes,
i miss them in ways that feel like drowning.
not like a daughter.
more like a survivor
trying to love the flood.

how do you measure love
that tasted like both sugar and blood?
how do you hold someone close
when half of you is still flinching?
it’s hard to explain
how love feels when it’s conditional
but you never got the conditions.

and even now,
when i cry too easily
or fall in love with the unpredictable,
i wonder
if i’m chasing storms
just because they feel like home.

i carry them in my bones
every laugh,
every bruise.
every tender thing that came wrapped in threat.
i’m still unlearning the reflex
to fix things that shouldn’t have broken in the first place.

i’m still unlearning
how to brace for love.
how to trust laughter.
how to believe that someone can choose me
without also choosing
to hurt me.

because i was raised by weather.
sun, then hail.
warmth, then warning.
i learned early
to pack for every season
even when i never left the house.

and even now,
i don’t know how to trust
a season that doesn’t change.
when someone raises their voice kindly,
when someone loves me with both hands,
i brace for the switch.
and the bruise.

author’s note: i hope not many of you relate. but if you do… you aren’t alone. just because it “wasn’t that bad” or “others had it worse” means you’re not valid. two things can exist at once.