Original subtitles

you want my daughter fine but give me that alcohol said my dad at that moment

died over and over back to back i watched him as my mouth hung open the

cackled licked his lips like i was meat drooling while i drowned over and over

on the echoes of my father's words i could feel them crawling inside me

burning the air was thick with smoke stale liquor my own fear bitter on my

tongue He looked me up and down like I was fruit at a market, bruised, cheap,

unwanted.

My worth?

A dollar, maybe less, seeing as I'd just been traded for a bottle.

I walked home, carrying Papa's bottle, while trying to gather the scattered

pieces of my soul, pieces that no one seemed to care about.

I was his.

Mama had insisted I was his.

She said it over and over, like a mantra, like it made it right.

She said I was his, so it was okay to leave me with him while she chased

pastures. She was suffocating in our small village.

She wanted to spread her wings, but she couldn't fly with an alcoholic.

He was too much for her. Her baby wings would break, so she dumped him on me, a

fourteen -year -old.

I became her shadow, her replacement, the one who carried the weight she

couldn't bear.

And yet, in all this, it's surprising, really, that I survived.

i mopped the floor he vomited on covered him with a blanket when he passed out

drunk on the tiles brought food from my friend's home so he could eat when he

was hung over i washed his vomit -stained clothes listened to him ramble

spilling nonsense into the night i had to be fast on my feet watch every step

he wouldn't fall on me when he stumbled drunk i did all this all of it but none

of it none of it heard as much as hearing him say you can have daughter

give me the bottle my papa might never know how much those words broke me even

though deep down i had always known that to him the bottle came first the bottle

came before me i had dared to hope it wasn't true so hearing him say that i

could be exchanged for the bottle with such desperation that broke me because

me my papa was always first