Sonnets From Other Lives: Krystal

She was thirteen when her father shaved her head
in a fit of feckless parental frustration.
What her specific offense was she never said
to us but the effect was the creation
of another person in place of his daughter.
who grew into exactly what he feared.
She threw away most everything he’d bought her.
From her nearly empty bedroom he would hear
the tinny growl of punk rock screaming rage.
He never knew that she’d decided she liked girls
or that the sleepovers he’d cluelessly OK
would portend his final exile from her world.

When visited him in the ICU
it was—she thought—the decent thing to do.