who are you (to me)?

i don’t know how to

make the pain of

my father’s abandonment

stop hurting

 

this is a wound

covered by a flimsy scab

prone to cracking

and seeping through the dressings

 

i have so many questions

and no answers

all this speculation

years of blaming myself for

his not knowing how to

not wanting to

be a father

be MY father

 

and i was just a kid

telling my classmates that

i didn’t even have a father

because he lived states away

while that void grew

bigger and darker inside me

 

and it has been nearly

three years since the last time

i saw my father

even though we live in the

same goddamn town

 

but this is not the first time

that contact have been lost

it just never started again

since i stopped reaching out

and finally put myself first

where my father is involved

 

just because you’re someone’s

father doesn’t mean you’re a dad

and i can’t remember when i stopped

seeing his face when i thought

of having a dad

but it’s been too damn long

 

and it feels strange

to even call him my father

but that’s about as informal as

i can get without calling him

by his first name

ya know?

 

and maybe i’m just

searching for closure

an apology that will never come

that reassurance that i wasn’t a bad kid

the promise that it’s not my fault

 

and maybe if those things are

said with enough conviction

by the right person

at the right time

i’ll believe them

 

i just want this

to stop

hunched over at my desk

crying until my lungs hurt

wondering what i did wrong

i was just a kid

 

i was just a kid

and i needed a father

i needed a dad

 

but i won’t force him

to be my father

to be in my life

because he clearly doesn’t want to

doesn’t know how to

 

and all i want right now

is to find a way for

the wound that this prolonged

cycle of abandonment left

to stop bleeding through my shirts

 

i want to stop seeing his face

whenever i look in the mirror

i want to stop asking myself why

i want to stop blaming myself

because i was just a kid

 

i was just a kid