Father

I used to wonder

What you sounded like

What you looked like

Why you weren’t here

For so long, 

I thought my punishment from God for all the wrong I was GONNA do, was your absence.

I wondered if I were simply a mistake of two teenagers who didn’t know their head from 
their a$$es.

I used to ask about you, a lot.

I was either sent outside to play or given a look that told me I shouldn’t even be asking.

So I stopped and simply accepted what I had

And I always had plenty,

Even when I was too ungrateful to realize it.

I let thoughts of you go 

During what I call ‘The Dark Years’

The years when I’d hardened my heart and my mind

The years when I felt like my life was founded on rejection and pain

The years when I didn’t care about much of anything, including myself

My teens and early twenties weren’t much fun at all.

Then something happened

I became a mother

The father proved that he wasn’t ready to be a father

I entered the real world

I got a better understanding of what you and Mommy just have faced

A better understanding of the responsibility it brings

Over the years

I’ve matured

I’ve gotten smarter

I’ve grown into a woman

And my mind came back to you

I started again to wonder

What you looked like

What you sounded like

If you thought of me, like I was thinking of you

My wonderment got the best of me and I replaced it with a need to know

To know

If you were still alive

If you lived close or far

If you were a fine, upstanding person

Or some cracked out drunken loser

Not that any of it really mattered

I just needed to know

So I began my search

For answers

For closure

For my father.

Each leg of my search brought me new revelations.

You were still alive

You were married

You had other children

And finally

An exact location

It took courage I didn’t have even know I had to send that letter

It took even more to answer that first phone call 

Stomach flipping

Heart pumping

With a simple “hello”

A door opened

To my past

To my future 

To the unanswered parts of me

To my father

Now that I’m here

I don’t regret a moment lost

I know that time cannot be replaced

But a new, improved future can be made.

And with you, my father

I’m looking forward to it.

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