Did you really have to change,
the moment I turned 11?

How the days we'd spend together,
suddenly turned into trying
to ignore each other
and screaming in the kitchen?

Maybe one day,
you'd see what I feel
and what I tried to convey.

How I drowned in my own thoughts
as a mere child,
while you were busy
fighting with mom,
or scrolling on the endless feed
your phone provides,
which hopes you rot.

I guess it wasn't for me to speak,
to tell you what it really meant
to raise someone,
or how to love properly.

But could I really blame you,
if that was all you'd seen as a kid?
passing on the poison given to you
that deepened the scars,
causing your unhealed wounds to bleed out,
while you knew nothing on what to do with it.

I didn't wish for anything grand
or the materialistic things
you ask me to be grateful for
I just needed you to understand.

To listen to me talk
about my day,
or ask me why I was upset
instead of yelling at me
to stop looking so annoyed and grey,
every waking moment.

You always make a point
to ask me why I changed,
from the sweet little girl you knew,
to whatever I've become now.
perhaps, did you ever stop to think--
why?

if you don't want a child
to grow up,
and become someone
what reason is there to raise it at all?

I suppose,
at one point in life
I'll learn to forgive you.

But all that comfort I yearned
and still do most of the time,
has yet to be returned.

It waits in the silent, dark place
between your anger and mine.

well, Dad,
did you really have to change?