This was not the first Mothers Day she and I had spent alone
But it was the first that you had not engaged with
The first that you had openly stated
You would be spending with somebody else
And not just anybody
The girl who was now more important
Than the tatters of family you had drawn a line under
You offered no respectful acknowledgment
Of the opportunities I have afforded you
By doing the only thing my heart will allow
And stepping in to fill the void that
You left
Doing the work of both Mother and Father now
Except on odd weekends
When I ache for the time I am losing with her
And I wondered how you would cope
If the shoe was on the other foot
Yet I know
I know because you will neglect to realise or perhaps
Refuse to remember
The love and the engineering that has been behind
Each fathers day to date
When I prompt her to keep in touch
When I get her to hastily make a card
To remember your value and your worth in her life
Encourage her to make it manifest somehow in a way
That both humbles and delights
You will not see that it is me behind these little declarations and outpourings
Despite how you have wounded me
Because you can no longer find it in you to do the same
To set that example of quality and expectation within your own daughters life
Demonstrating how a man should behave
You seem to have unlearned this ability
Buried your talent
When you cut the cord that May morning
I had not realised
The violent sever you would inflict more
Than a decade later
How sharp it would feel to wake up one morning
And to know
That you have plucked your own eyes from your face
Blinded yourself to the value of this mothers work
And you now leave it to others
To wish me a happy day
Celebrating the journey of bringing life into this world
And nurturing and steering that growing flame
Keeping it ablaze
And training it towards the throwing of a fierce but kind light into this world
My body revels in the ruin of this action
Impressed with the marks and the tells of labour
The bit that will forever be left over
The scars and the changes of a biological purpose fulfilled
Relics of the precarious but powerful position
Of being able to birth another
The line between life and death so finely drawn
And memories caught in aspic
Of the elation felt in that moment
When both lives are tangible and
Both hearts still beating only now
One thumps in the room
Outside of the other
And what evidence remains in you
Now the “dad haircut” is gone
And you inhabit your childhood room
Now you live so many hours on the bus
Train
Office
Commute
What piece of you offers any sign
If you won’t declare it yourself
Of the precious world that we were able to build together
Before you dropped your end of the bargain
And left me struggling like atlas
Her world on my shoulders alone
Trajectory slowed
Trying to keep the globe turning
Whilst you wander where you want
Supposedly never wondering
If the sun still rises in the home you left behind
I can tell you that it does
After a long dark night
As I settle down on the morning of
That first dreaded Mothers Day
The wreckage of this place no longer smouldering
I sink in comfortably
A lie-in insisted upon
Blowing the fragrant and welcome steam
From the top of a cup of tea
That one most wonderful
Has brought me to cradle
In your now dulled absence
Filling the outline that you left behind
Tenfold
With genuine care and concern for my day
A day I had fully expected might start with the spilling of tears
Begins with the first smile of many
