Baby Boxer
by Tonya Cherie Hegamin
Headline: Child’s Father Charged with Beating Daughter To Death
NBC 10 News: Clementon, NJ; October 26, 2004
‘“She was my everything…. I know the way people look at it now, it’s like, ‘How could you have not known?’…. [But] He seemed like he was the best daddy in the entire world.’”
—Katie Donnachie, baby Kira’s mother
I.
I did it to teach them
how to protect themselves
from a world that beat on me.
At two months
they ready to learn
this world’s too tough
for crybabies.
Hold up your fists
little one, show me
what you’re made of.
II.
The boy healed fast, but
still, they took him from me
before I could teach him
how to block a blow properly.
And now I got this girl
needing all the training
she can get. Her mother
say I’m the best daddy
in the world. She right.
The best dads
teach their kids
how to fight.
