Oh, here we go again...

You, dear father, and your successful attempts to break my heart every visit

I will never understand how you manage to accumulate the audacity to show your face after half of my life has passed

You dare address me with such endearment? Calling me by names I so vaguely remember when I was a child?

And to think I would forget your absence, how your face flickers in my memory, the constant ins and outs of you in my vulnerable life, the inconsistent flashes...

I see you managed to bring me flowers, at least that is worthy of a congratulations, maybe a hug? A kiss? An I love you?

But sadly you'll never receive any of those, no.

How does it feel to look down at me now? When my eyes are shut, refusing to take another photograph of your face. How does it feel to know you're too late? How does it feel to know you let my life pass without worry

You, dear father, have let me down once again! And I still have the audacity to keep loving you even so...

A great betrayal to my mother, sweet mother, who filled both your and her own space as a parent.
I will never forgive you for the pain you've caused her, and me...

Oh, now you want to cry...

You, dear father, should not have come here in the first place

My life has passed, and it has passed well even though you were hardly there. For birthdays, celebrations, graduations, Christmas, New years, my first job, first promotion, wedding, first child, second child, I could even say you weren't there to watch me take my first steps into adolescence and towards adulthood, womanhood.

And yet I never got mad at you for any of them, I never let myself hate you for not being the father figure I needed, for prioritising your other things instead of mom and me, for treating us like side hustles, plan bs, other options

Until now, until today, where I realise that all this time I never really needed you. And you never cared about being needed in the first place

You, dear father, are what you are to me by blood and always will be until it all dries up. But you, dear father, were never really my father... no

The “man”  beside you, the one who has her own warm tears drip onto my shut eyes as she clutches her own bouquet of flowers to place between my crossed hands, the one whom I resemble with precision, SHE is my father, the best I've ever had

Don't get it twisted, dear father, my audacity to love you still stands, but as my blood goes cold, so does my heart and so does my hopes of you being there for me and making the effort for me

I've hurt enough already and when I said you never fail at your attempts to break my heart every visit, I knew that you would do exactly that

When you shudder the words “I LOVE YOU”  I lay in disbelief, I'm appalled even, and it gets worse when you lean down and mark my forehead with a classic paternal kiss, and right then and there I feel, and oh do I feel, that despite everything; YOU ARE STILL MY FATHER

And that I, corpse in the coffin, Love you too
And that is what breaks my heart into a million pieces.

-x♡.