dad?

i tell myself

i don’t care that
it’s been two years

since the last time

i saw my father

i tell myself

i don’t care that

he wasn’t even really

in my life until i was 7

and before that i just told

people i didn’t have

a father

i tell myself

i don’t care that

my father hates me

but i’m crying like

my dog just died

so it’s not very convincing

and i can pinpoint when

he stopped loving me

later on in my life

than i've thought for years

but can you really blame me

when he’s not around to ask?

and it’s this book he gave me

a memoir

the summer before i started

my freshman year of high school

where he called me his darling

and signed it “love, pops”

i read that book

last week

cried my way through

almost the whole thing

holding the bent pages and

cracked spine like i wanted

him to hold my hand again

but i did something

when i was growing up

to make him stop loving me

and for years i thought that

if i just went deep enough

i could dig it out

but that thing goes

deeper than my bone marrow

and he’s not around to ask

and i’m crying like an idiot

over this man that

probably won’t even know what

i look like

in 5 years or 10

and i have so many things

to ask him

to say to him

like why he didn’t want to be my father

why he wasn’t proud of me

why he doesn’t love my anymore

how i feel like it’s all my fault

and he probably agrees with me

and that might have made me

resent him

maybe even hate him

a year or two ago

but tonight

it just makes me cry

harder