The memory of your battered work boots,
tipped on their sides and haphazardly strewn about
the back hallway, my mother
asking you to put them away.

To the love song playing on the radio,
you recalled that the first time you
heard it, you were standing in Times Square
and you immediately thought of my mother.  (I
wonder if you still think of her.)  You
picked up a can of Miller.  You took a swig.

My sister, just a few months old and laying in
her bassinet, plucked from the comfort and placed
into her carrier.  You toted her around with you,
took her to meet the crowd in the beer garden.
You took two sips.

On the weekends, you would lounge on the couch with
race cars in your eyes.  Your thoughts were far
away from little girls playing dress up and
little girls toying with dolls.  Your thoughts were on
the equipment from work that you had
begun hoarding.  You took three gulps.

My weekends, spent with my grandparents, felt
like mini vacations.  Your cool distance and rotten
behavior towards my mother felt like arms outstretched,
keeping me away, forcing me away.  Childhood like a peach
out in the sun for too long, overripe and decaying,
you threw it in the trash and I helped.  

The sour taste in my mouth is leftover childhood
ignorance, the kick in my gut when I think about you
is leftover betrayal—I will not mourn a traditional
childhood, I will mourn your lack of apathy.  You will
never know remorse.  

The phone will ring, and I will not answer.  You will
leave messages, and I will delete them.  We are
on two different planes now,
                                                      Daddy.