POEM: But I Am Your Child

But I Am Your Child

My father never looked for me.
In more than 30 years he never wrote,
never called, never
showed up outside my school
or at my job,
never spotted me through a fence
playing with my sons at the park.

It’s been four years and my parents
are clearly content
to let this silence stretch
into permanence,
to hold on to the other child
and pretend she was the first
and only.

/ / /

24 August 3023
Charlottesville VA

This is poem 34 in a series called 50 Days Till 50 Years. I’m writing a poem a day between now and my 50th birthday. I’m going to try to focus on memories of my past, and the people who inhabited it.