For Papa

For Papa

In June, after several beers
Papa asks me to stay,
easing himself to the ground
placing an empty beer can to his side
he looks at me the way you do
when you are preparing to scold a child
And for the first time I see myself in his eyes

Two days ago my father told me
he loved me for the first time in several years
it was drowned out by the static
of running water in the kitchen sink
and sadly, I gave no response,
but instead turned back to the dirty dishes
His mother, my grandmother
was dying in the other room

We stood back to back amidst the stale air
as our lives became forever stained with cancer
I felt the permanent lines forming on his face, wishing
I could take my palms and rub the sadness out
but instead I stood too afraid to look into his eyes and
become the adult of the situation,
promising him that it would get better,
though it will never make sense,
the best is almost always the unexplainable

It has been fourteen years since I needed my father and
pined for the reassurance of his touch or the attention
that would remind me he was there
And now I am five years old again with curly blonde hair,
but his touch is no longer familar and
his voice no longer soothing
Time has succeeded, leaving us nostalgic for 1990

Sometimes I think about being forty-five and
burying my father
I wonder if it will hurt more that he is gone or
that I never really knew him
Then I wonder if I will think of that June
when the world split sideways and never
came back again, though he was desperate
in his love for me, I refused to stay me
And am forced to let regret define me