They sent Daddy home
from suicide watch—
he was bound to lose it someday.
Mom locked up the
kitchen knives.
She comes back to me,
her quivering voice
delivers some deluded promise,

“He said he won’t hurt himself,
I’m just being safe.”

The house is still silent with absence,
he stares at the wall—
hidden in the basement
like the last twenty thirty years
of some void of a life,
guarded by an eggshell
cracked by decades of denial.

You aged ten years in a weekend, Daddy,
And I always feared I’d bury you
before I witnessed my first grey hair,
silver like the lining
of some magical cloud
I can’t seem to distinguish
in this homogenous fog, looming
in the bleak and inescapable sky
hovering over me
with careless indifference

I knew there’d be a day like this,
only now has it come true.
I knew you couldn’t love me, Daddy,
You never loved you, too.