and three years on
i still do not know how
to forgive you for leaving me

my mother tells me it was not your fault
you could hardly have asked the cancer politely
to let you live

i know this
but it is not your death that i grieve
it is the life that you never had
while breath was still inside of you

i grieve for the father who used to
swing me upside down
until my laughter echoed in my ears

i grieve the father who told me to write poetry
even when the world said that i was not good enough

i grieve the man who sung me lullabies
so that i could sleep

they say being a child is your most vulnerable time
but nobody warned me that adolescence
would bring with it
doubt and fear beyond my fragile understanding
and i needed you to hold me close
and maybe i was too old for lullabies
but i was not so old you couldn't tell me
that i was wanted
and most importantly
loved by you

and i know that you loved me
i do
but as your sickness took hold
you forgot to remind me
that i was bonded to you
and that once bonded
you would never let me go
because i severed the ropes that bound us
and you didn't even try to stop me

you were a shell of a person
a wraith in human skin
and i did not know how to look at you
as my father anymore

you never realised that when you lost yourself
i lost myself too
and by the time we buried you
there was more of me in your coffin
than inside the person throwing flowers into the grave

and i do not forgive you for leaving me
and perhaps i never will
but i know that it is time for me
to pull myself from the earth beside you
and start to live again