Voice to the Voiceless

Daddy Comes Home Today
Daddy comes home today
And my ears hang low, and they wobble to and fro

And I can throw them over my shoulder like a continental soldier

and then I can be like my Dad.

Strong and tough and brave and good and smart and the best.

When Daddy left for his army vacation Mom told me he was going to I-rack.

Mommy has a spice rack

Baby Julie has a diaper rack

I have a stuffed animal rack

And Daddy has an I- rack.
That’s an inside family joke I think is funny
but I feel silly when Mommy tells it in front of other people.

I kiss Iraq on the map on my wall every night before I go to sleep.
I try to squeeze my lips really tight so they don’t touch Syria or I-ran, but my Mommy says people there could use my goodnight kisses too.

Daddy told me how to tell my left from my right.

Sometimes I get it wrong

But tonight I will kiss Daddy on his right cheek

And whisper “I missed you” in his left and he will know that I am smart

Just like Mrs. Jacobs knows I’m smart when I name all the US State Capitals in alphabetical order by state.

Smart
like winning the geography bee last month

Only this time it will only be Daddy cheering for me and it will be

the greatest.

Daddy comes home today
And I will sleep safely for the first time since he left.
Because Daddy really knows how to look for monsters in all the scariest places.

He looks in the closet

And under the bed

And just outside the window.

He looks in the air conditioning vent.

Tonight Daddy’s hug was the best I’ve ever had in my life.

It was like a thousand hugs all in one and for a minute

I thought I couldn’t breathe

n a really, really, really good way.

I fell asleep in the car and wasn’t awake for Daddy to put me to bed

But I feel safer already just knowing he is here.

I am safe and

Daddy is home and

everything is the

best.

But Mommy is different since Daddy is home.
Her eyes aren’t as shiny.
Her jokes, less funny.
Her smile, hiding in her pocket like Megan’s Girl Scout song.
And it's weird—
But she seems more alone now that Daddy is home.

Can I tell you a secret?
Tonight I heard crashes below my bed

Below where the monsters sleep and into the kitchen.

I didn’t leave my bed.

I tried to be a big boy.

I pulled the covers over my ears
and recited state capitals to fall asleep.

In the morning I ate my Lucky Charms out of Mommy’s good bowls

because something very, very, very bad happened to my Dinosaur ones.

Mommy had this purple spot under her glasses that I tried to ignore

But as she sat across from me at breakfast, reading me Peanuts from the funnies

it was all I could see

think about

stare at.
Did Baby Julie hit her when she was changing her diapers?
Did she run into a wall?

Did this have something to do with the crashes I heard last night?

With Daddy’s voice rumbling under my bed the way thunderstorms do on nights

When they are competing with monsters to see who’s scarier.

Daddy’s voice
Daddy’s voice
Daddy’s voice is meaner

Tonight I tucked myself in.

I can’t check the scariest places by myself

So I just squeezed into that tight place in my covers

And made sure not even a hair was sticking out

Tonight I am hiding

from the monster

in my mommy’s bedroom.

This was a poem written while I was working for an affordable housing organization. One of the families we worked with was a mom who, with her six kids, was forced to flee from her husband after he suffered PTSD from his time in Iraq. I wanted to tell the story of one of the children.