Once a year I get to reflect

on all I’ve ever known a man to be.

Which is to say absolutely nothing.

 

I am fatherlessly fathered.

I remember whose freckles I have.

Whose clenched fist and rolled tongue.

 

My fatherless Father’s Day

is the elephant in my therapy chart.

My Freudian slip.

That daddy kink I have yet

to develop fully.

 

I grieve a life

not yet complete.

I grieve a life

I’ll never have

and perhaps

always deserved.

 

An ambiguous mourning

walking herself down an aisle.

Imagine a holiday,

exactly for that.