Father
I used to wonder
What you sounded like
What you looked like
Why you weren’t here
For so long,
I thought my punishment from God for all the wrong I was GONNA do, was your absence.
I wondered if I were simply a mistake of two teenagers who didn’t know their head from
their a$$es.
I used to ask about you, a lot.
I was either sent outside to play or given a look that told me I shouldn’t even be asking.
So I stopped and simply accepted what I had
And I always had plenty,
Even when I was too ungrateful to realize it.
I let thoughts of you go
During what I call ‘The Dark Years’
The years when I’d hardened my heart and my mind
The years when I felt like my life was founded on rejection and pain
The years when I didn’t care about much of anything, including myself
My teens and early twenties weren’t much fun at all.
Then something happened
I became a mother
The father proved that he wasn’t ready to be a father
I entered the real world
I got a better understanding of what you and Mommy just have faced
A better understanding of the responsibility it brings
Over the years
I’ve matured
I’ve gotten smarter
I’ve grown into a woman
And my mind came back to you
I started again to wonder
What you looked like
What you sounded like
If you thought of me, like I was thinking of you
My wonderment got the best of me and I replaced it with a need to know
To know
If you were still alive
If you lived close or far
If you were a fine, upstanding person
Or some cracked out drunken loser
Not that any of it really mattered
I just needed to know
So I began my search
For answers
For closure
For my father.
Each leg of my search brought me new revelations.
You were still alive
You were married
You had other children
And finally
An exact location
It took courage I didn’t have even know I had to send that letter
It took even more to answer that first phone call
Stomach flipping
Heart pumping
With a simple “hello”
A door opened
To my past
To my future
To the unanswered parts of me
To my father
Now that I’m here
I don’t regret a moment lost
I know that time cannot be replaced
But a new, improved future can be made.
And with you, my father
I’m looking forward to it.
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