For the first time in four days

I woke not completely

Obliterated by depression

No noose around my neck

No chain to my step

More roses than thorns

Thunder and horns

Father’s Day has passed

Two text messages from

Two sons was the only gift

No word from my father

In decades and decades

Before that more silence

His lost is my detachment

Life’s funny disorder

There was nothing unique

About growing up in the

90’s father-less

But unlike the cicadas cry

Cycles break and I pass on

No fatherless existence

And I take the hits

Privilege goes unappreciated

But what would be worse is

The guilt of knowing I made

Anyone grow up feeling

As I felt

A forgotten burden

An unloveable storm

A ghost

A curse

Spilling heart out with

Knuckles to dry wall

Shot out car windows

The slamming of a red door

The amount of fear a small

Child can carry is tremendous

Some will take sips

Other will take a puff

But it’s never enough

Until you fill the hole

In your chest that our

Parents left

And those chains rot away

When  I hug my sons and

It’s like Spring again

We stand tall as the three

Pillars of a new home