INDEPENDENT

0.3 … Dad

The last time I saw you
had been years before
you were gone.

It’s taken a lifetime for
me to reckon with
never getting
to say good bye,
and it is a pain
as much a part
of my blood as
the chromosomes
you lent me.

In my one recurring nightmare,
I scream at you, cry at you,
feel like I’m dying to get you
not to listen, but to hear me.
Hear my heartbreak.
Hear my lonlieness.
Hear how angry I am
that your actions meant
you never got to know me.

But in the dream,
after I scream,
I ask, don’t you have anything to say?!
And that’s the moment
it becomes a nightmare,
because you shake your head
and you walk away.

When mom told us,
I went numb,
not knowing how to reason
with the emotions of losing
a dad that I feared
never truly loved me.
But I still cried,
I still mourned,
because now,
I would never know.

And for that,
my heart felt
more shattered than
the bottles you once broke
against the floor.

For more from this collection, visit

elluminations, vol. 0
INDEPENDENT

Click here to learn more about elluminations. This poem is also available on Medium.

Cover photo by   James Sutton  |  (elluminations © 2018 Elayna Mae Darcy)