The little man, shriveled up and still,
lay in the wooden coffin, his gold
tooth glittering in the vast silence.

Once a furious sphere of dark energy
that whirled and swirled around me,
and inside my head, forever inside,
he was Father, a wolf that devoured
my spirit, my unforgiving cannibalistic
Father whom I loved and loathed.

He lay in the wooden coffin, his dark
brown eyes vacant and far away. I
bent over the coffin and whispered,
“Fire and ice, ice and fire.”

Inside my brain, a boiling, seething
heat overflowed, a waterfall of fire
cascading down and flooding my
psyche. Yet a cold chill replaced
the heat.

I can’t recall how long my emotions
were wrapped in ice. I took a deep
breath that spanned decades of despair,
exhaled my rage, and spoke through
the eerie silence to his empty dark
brown eyes.

I whispered, “Father, I forgive you!”