Tears That Came Too Late

TEARS THAT CAME TOO LATE

You know, for almost forty years, I hated you, blamed you, tried my damndest to be nothing like you.

I patterned my life to be everything you were not. I learned to suppress the parts of me that came from you. Every time she cried it was your doing. Every time I lied, it was your doing. You were everything that I despised, never more so than when I saw it in the mirror.

Every New Year's Eve, I tell myself “This year’s a different thing, – I’ll not think of you.” Every year I lie to myself.

So why - fifteen long years after you drank yourself to death - when I saw your picture on Father’s Day, I cried for you,

Daddy.


© Christopher Reilley
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This prosery inspired in part, and born with amazing synchronicity to, the line in quotes, by Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) and used as a prompt by those annual memorists over at DVerse Poets.

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