when a father can’t help feeling threatened by his child, sometimes the way he loves you is by giving you access to tools and keeping himself out of your way.
when a father can’t help feeling threatened by his child, sometimes the way he loves you is by giving you access to tools and keeping himself out of your way.
i am in great pain, but with great pain comes great strength.
we once had a dog, a gentle bear named rocky. my dad used to resent him because when he would escape and my dad would go out looking for him, rocky would always pretend he didn’t know him when they met on the street.
he acts like a complete stranger, my dad would say, spitefully. no loyalty. some people have tenuous ideas of attachment.
like abandoning your daughter on a dance floor during a father daughter dance without a single thought back, because you’ve always needed the admiration of boys.
*****
but despite these things, you still resolve to love the ones in your life, knowing their flaws. it’s almost as though by being brutally conscious of them, it allows you to understand realistically what you can and can not expect. doesn’t make it hurt less when you know what life denied you. but at least the understanding allows you to make peace with it. you can’t squeeze water out of a stone. and you can’t make a dream into a reality where the reality does not exist.
god is out there. but you’ll never find your god in men where none exists.
and by you, i’m talking about i.
sometimes when cool fingers stretch over oceans to reach your side of the sheets, you let yourself lay open to the pull of the tide.
i want to tell you the stories of memories. old men drinking whiskey in rooms drowsy with cigar smoke, speaking of time. daughters turned women. wives masquerading goddesses and shadows. the humility of old age. cars. impotence. teeth.
and single memories. perfect days. preserved as single roses on silent mountain tops, immune to snowstorms and time.
in the beginning there was me and you.
in the end, there was you and me.
what remains a question of in-between.
in your dreams, we are watching the moon.
in my dreams, you are watching me, too.