Me and My Apathy by Ayesha Owais (16, Pakistan)

Father plays hide and seek with us every night before we go lie on the petals,
He hides in the corner that leads him out of the house/ he will come back/ he will come back/ he will not/ I'm grateful that he does come back every time
I dip my feet in the warm water he brings home every night,
Guilty of doing so

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He smells of cigarettes at times and on days like those, home is one place he avoids, I'm someone he avoids/ on days like those I drink up his expensive bottle of champagne because it's too expensive for me to drain it down the sink/ on days like those I pray to the lord, I pray for all his loneliness to follow me home/ I pray/ I pray/ I believe not/ 
I would say that I fear his anger but the anger his skin absorbs is the aggression my soul drowns in/ when I say my mother's got a lonely home, I mean to say that my father and I are the lonely she's got and home is someplace else she resides/
I inherited the blood that cups up all the emotion and drowns it in the river, 
But even so, that very same river drowns me and I can do nothing.