oh father
1995
This is my letter to you.
I cannot speak, I can barely write,
my knuckes are now white from the tension
and my hand shakes with fear.
My secret, the secret on this page, has lasted
twenty years, eight months and eleven days.
And it will probably last
until you are well beyond your grave.
It all started the way it usually does,
as I was showing someone
some of my poetry.
They were reading my magazines,
the ones you never read,
although I offered them to you.
They would read,
they would compliment,
and I would blush,
for I could never understand
how someone could appreciate me.
Do you see
what you’ve taught me?
Then they’d read the poem
about my father.
You know the one,
the one where I imagine
you are dead.
I remembered when your daughter
phoned me to tell me you were sick.
And I didn’t care.
I just imagined you were dead.
But once
I was gripped with fear
when I thought of you dying.
Just once.
I don’t remember when.
But it bothered me.
How can I care about you? I hate you.
Why should I love you? You never loved me.
I felt weak
when I thought I cared
fro a man I didn’t know.
Maybe I wanted to care,
to think that one day
you might magically turn into
my father,
pick me up on your shoulders,
twirl me around the room.
Maybe I didn’t want to accept
my reality.
I wanted to forget you.
I walked over to the liquor cabinet,
but I realized that that is what you’d do.
I wanted to yell
but then I remembered your temper.
Then I wondered
if this is why I hated myself
as much as I hated you.
I remember when I was five
you called me an ass-hole
for something I didn’t do.
And I remember that you never apologized.
I remember when you’d yell at me
for not smiling.
“God-damnit, you have nothing
to be depressed about,”
you’d say.
And I would just try to smile for you.
I remember when you told me
not to disrupt your God-damned life
and I just sat there,
speechless.
I was only trying to be nice,
I didn’t ask to be your child,
I didn’t ask for anything.
And now you say I ask for too much.
All I asked for was love from you,
you bastard,
but that was the one thing
you just didn’t seem willing to give.
So I’ll close this letter
knowing you’ll never bother to read it,
knowing I’ll never bother to send it.
I am stubborn, like yourself,
and will have to keep this secret with me
while I try to run from you.
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