My Vigil

Sitting near, your guitar in your hands. You play a melody you learned by ear  

I listened for hours. Playing countless music videos and concerts on the TV, I learned  

all of your favorites. Saturdays, days of frenzied cleaning,  

saving all of the chores for that one day. Watching  

as you frantically do all that you can before the day 

is done. Looking forward to daddy-daughter dates, every once in a while.  

Avoiding, when you come home from work, hearing  

the common phrase I work all day and when I come home...  

Were there dishes in the sink again?  

Did Austin ask you a question?  

Did Mom say something about bills? I still feel my chest tighten  

remembering you and Mom fighting. Yelling 

and then hushed words

like two fighting cats, unable to be near each other.  

You left first, then Mom.  

You came back, Mom found an apartment.  

Seeing the stranger you’ve become 

stood in my doorway, blocking the exit  

thinking He's going to hurt me. I left that night,  

I found a home with Mom.  

 

You have a new wife, one who looks at me like a smushed bug on their shoe.  

Words wrapped in barbed wire catch 

my ears, spoken by you, your wife  

You spread poison into my siblings.  

Mom deleting texts from my phone. Some of them I had not read yet,  

ones I had read leaving me shaking, 

tears on Mom's shoulder, no breath left in my lungs.  

For a time, there was no texting, calling, or meeting. I learned to live 

apart from you, but it was like the Moon resisting its orbit 

I was drawn back in, your words a drug to this addict.  

Only for you to pull away for months at a time, leaving me 

craving attention once more.  

So many years of waiting for the next hit, watching  

the poison you fed my siblings slowly turn back on you,  

breaking the very relationships you relied on.  

Now you admit some faults, yet allowing your wife to yell at and berate my little brother. 

You reach out for me now and I contemplate slamming the door. I've watched  

as you created a new life, a new family. I watch  

from the outside, you have a family Christmas with unfamiliar faces.  

I am like an abused dog, wishing for a gentle pat on the head that comes every once in a while.