When the reaper came for you
on the first warm day of fall,
people expected a performance
something theatrical,
grief loud enough to be admired.
I can do that.
I’ve done it before.
What they didn’t know:
you were never a good father.
Violence and alcohol
rarely leave room for that.
For years
I watched you soften for others,
my siblings,
your chosen reflections
while I stood just outside the frame,
unseen,
a presence you learned
not to notice.
For years
I studied the way my friends
said dad
how easily it came,
how it meant something.
I wanted that ease.
I wanted you to look at me
and recognize what was yours.
I thought I was asking
for very little.
Over time,
wanting thinned into something else—
resentment,
then bitterness,
then a harder word
I still hesitate to name.
And still
I grieve
what never existed:
the conversations,
the ordinary afternoons,
the quiet accumulation
of being known.
I miss the time
we never had.
I miss the future
that never formed.
But most of all,
I am left with this:
nothing to miss of you,
and nowhere
to put it.
TheJFiles 