What can I say of a father
Who was too ill to notice my birth?
Whose gentle nature at once endeared him to me
         and caused me the greatest pain of my whole life.
And Dad, when I went to wake you all those mornings in vain,
Did you notice the fear behind my squeaking laughter?
Or the sound of my retreat?
Did your love for me grow when I sketched your sky
And folded the laundry while you were away?

I think of the slow droning burn of the days,
How my life was a struggle for power, a struggle for words.
I waged war at seven.
There had to be violence and noise and ruin,
For the tumult that surrounded me never ceased
And had never before been produced
By my own small body,
Though I believed I was the perpetrator all along.

Our finest chinas grew fewer as I grew older,
And the laziness of my household grew too.
Gnats swarmed our remaining plastic bowls
As the rooms expanded both in fullness and in void.
A lack. A lack of mom. Dad away in the shed, tinkering.

Sometimes, Dad, your face took on a look of health.
A health whose glow radiated unto me, your satellite.
And in those moments of brightness, i believed in god,
In everything, in your capacity, in your love, your promises,
In my own beauty.

I brought you my words and lavished upon you my art, my books,
My trinkets of artistic arrangement.
I showed you the house of my creation where there were girls
With blue shoes and there was peace within the six pink rooms.

The moon learns in time that there are passing phases
And that the constancy of the sun’s luminosity is illusory.
But i was too young to know of ancient cycles,
And in my beating heart it was unlove
and there was no trace of hope when you turned face
And eclipsed me.