since we last talked
(if yelling is talking),
and i got mad,
and you got mad;
we all got mad,
and in the end
i gave you up
and the ensuing silence said
“you aren’t my father,
and you never were,
and you never will be,
and i never want to see you again.”

and there’s nothing like death
to draw me back,
to bring me back to say
“you gave me some of the best times
of my life, and I don’t know
who I would be without you,
and i love you, despite your fuck-ups;”
the very things that i can’t say,
that i never will say,
as you lie dead
in a morgue
in pueblo,
colorado.