Forgive me –
The day breaks and so do I. Someone played the moonlight sonata at
11 in the morning and all I could think of was how you’d never return. You do
not follow some things into the light, mother says.
Or into the dark.
I didn’t follow you at all – was that a mistake?
I wonder.
I wish I had. How I wish I had.
Forgive me –
For existing in two places at the same time when I can scarcely bear to hold on in one. What
am I doing?
Your father is only your father until one of you forgets, says he [Ocean].
Like a glitch in time, the world bends, unspools, and I find myself tripping –
on air.
I see you in two places at once.
You’re whole in one, broken in the other.
Dead in both.
How unfortunate is life. And what about death?
And what of what comes after?
Forgive me –
I haven’t seen my father in twenty-one years. [You said it’s better not to follow things and
so, I didn’t.] I collect what’s left of him –
notes in crumpled books of the things that he’d never do, days he’d never see.
Old shirts both plain and heavy, perfume that smells like ’96. There’s a watch that
doesn’t run anymore, a battered silver razor – with a rusted blade wedged into it.
He took with him nothing.
Except my childhood. What of the scars?
They’re all mine.
Morning broke today, and it was my fault.
I apologise
For the melancholy. For the violent joy.
For playing the first movement on a morning that had blue skies.
Why must things break?
Forgive me –
Photo by White Field Photo on Unsplash
