The Golden Child Gets Dessert

That coloring book raised me in small ways. It let me be messy, still safe, still welcome, while the adults walked past the door like my silence was polite.

I used to hide
in the office
during family dinners
because the room with all the smiles
had no space for mine.

He had daughters.
Given seconds of dessert
and first pick of the remote.
He called them angels.
And he meant it.

As for myself,
he said I needed to learn
how to take a joke.
How to square my shoulders
when the laughing turned cruel.
How to man up
before the world broke me first.

He’d corner me
between coat racks
and comments.
Mock my voice.
Imitate my face.
Say I looked weak,
acted soft,
walked like someone
who hadn’t been hit enough.

And when I disappeared,
when I vanished quietly
into the room with the old desk
and the half-dead plant,
no one came looking.
Not once.

---

I opened the
Ghostbusters coloring book again.
Same one, every year.
Ryan 1986.
Ryan 1987.
Ryan 1988.
Ryan 1989.

Each page with my name,
each line darker than the last.
I traced the same characters
over and over.
Built quiet friendships
with outlines that couldn’t judge me.
I could color them wrong
and they’d still stay.

Meanwhile,
he laughed with the grown-ups,
louder when I was close,
even louder when I was gone.
He knew what he was doing.
And so did they.

But no one stopped it.
No one pulled me back
from the cracked tile floor
where my knees bruised
while I filled in blue skies
I never got to see.

I remember every year
like it was laminated.
I remember thinking
if I just colored enough,
someone would ask
why I was always alone.

But they never did.

They passed the door.
Passed the blame.
Passed the plate
without noticing
I wasn’t eating there with them.

I stayed in that room
every time I visited with family.
Because the safest place
was anywhere he wasn’t.

I remember,
just how tightly
I held the crayon.
How quiet I stayed
so I wouldn’t be called a problem.
How every page felt like a secret
I wasn’t strong enough to say out loud.

And how somehow,
that coloring book
kept more of me in its pages
than my family ever did.

Thanks for staying with it.

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