We the Orphans

Once, as a babe far too young to know,
A man was there to help me grow,
I didn’t call him “Dad,”
As I was too young to talk,
I suppose for that short while that
his heart was unlocked.
With a smugness of pride,
he fed me a bottle,
When I was so young
I had just learned to waddle.
Once, as a child,
Too young to remember,
I had lost an important family member.
Not to death,
But to arrogance in the form of more than an ember,
A raging fire consumed his heart.
In the cold and the horridly lonely dark.
You were the dad who was never there
Who never cared
to repair
Our relationship,
My wings that you clipped,
you left me alone,
to become grown,
all on my own,
without a friend
without a father.
I guess I might be a bother to you,
or that you might not even know what you have done
to my life and my heart
I was broken from the start,
from the moment you decided you weren’t ready
to be there for me,
to care for me,
to swear to me
to always be there by my side
that you’d always be there if I needed to cry.
You left my life in shambles
from the moment I turned one,
the messages were scrambled,
Were you there,
Were you not,
I didn’t know,
they wouldn’t stop,
the thoughts that would rush into my head,
“Do you love me?
Do you care?
Do you ever plan to be there?
Why don’t you want me?
Do you hate me?
Why aren’t I good enough?
What did I do wrong?
Was there something I could’ve done before you said ‘so long’?”
And all of these thoughts are wrong
Because in the end,
you were never really my friend,
You were a jerk who left the first chance he got
Who about being a father knew not.
Who never cared
Who wasn’t there
To wipe my tears
for sixteen years
Who doesn’t know
the pain he causes
who made me go through one million losses
in one. Except you aren’t dead
that would be so much easier instead
of crying over you
I’d imagine what you’d do
Instead of saying “He should call me today
but he doesn’t care”
I would be able to say “He would call me today,
but he can’t”
I’m not uncommon,
Not one in a million,
Matter of fact, I’m one in three,
Children that is, 24 million, in totality
That’s more than a few lives ruined, in factuality
That’s just the beginning of the statistics,
Because that’s what I am,
That’s what we all are, in truth.
We are the millennials.
The fatherless.
The orphaned.
The pained.
Because I can’t deal with the fact that you’ll never love me.
I can’t deal with the fact that I’ll never have a father.
I can’t deal with the fact that I’ll never have you.
Because I’m still your kid.
But you refuse to be my dad.