Dear Angeleyea,

Early mourning......

For myself..

As I left this morning, I heard a mourning dove cooing on the street lamp post in the front of our home.  I had to stop and marvel him for a moment before I left for my busy day.  I love mourning doves.  I used to love to be awakened by them first thing at my grandmother’s house when I was little.

Tonight as I sit watching television, I also notice you smile at the stupid commercials, and silly programs.  

Your smile could light a tunnel.  I don’t see that smile much anymore.  It's been taken from you and I don't know why.

Digging into your sacred niches of sunshine and looting the grin from your face. 

When I say I’m sorry for your sadness, it doesn’t begin to express the depth of my anguish for you.  I feel tired for you.  I recognize the drawn expression etched in your beautiful profile, and I taste the swallow of the tears that pool in the corners of your eyes,

                             burning and flooding 

                             your once rosy cheeks.

Half of you speaks in smiles.  The other half is paralyzed with the stain of your virtue, and the pluck of your shadow.  You are a fragment of the woman you were before that heinous reality of life knocked you down.

I fear you will never laugh genuinely again.   And I hate how your thoughts make you feel knowing that nothing you write, and no amount of tears will ever make a difference , or more importantly.......make you whole.  You're missing something.

Your father will never be sorry.  He will never be a victim.  He will never place value in or around you because he isn't here anymore for you.  I am saddened that his death has stripped you of your charisma, your dignity, and your carefree ability to love without regard.

But mostly,

               I grieve your heart, 

                                   with its relentless beat

that keeps you moving.

Because I know you want to curl up and cease to exist.

And as selfish as it is,

if it did stop pumping,

I would die.

I heard a mourning dove when I left the house today.

I’m sure he was singing your name.

Love Always....yourself.

The letter I never received....

The letter I never received......

While i was sorting through some of my father's old things, i found a letter that he wrote to me. It was very sloppy, but I forgave him of his terrible handwriting. It really bothers me that he wrote this but never had the nerve to give it to me.

Dear Angel,

I wanted to say I’m sorry.

Sorry for yelling.

Sorry for drinking.

Sorry for cursing.

Sorry for giving up.

Sorry for letting my soul die.

I want to explain why I walk away, and why I have to be right even when you're completely right about what's good for me.

It was never anything you did.  It wasn’t what you said.  It was everything you did and said.  I lump it all together, because I grow weary of being wrong.  Not wronged by you, just wronged by circumstance.  I need someone else to blame for every miserable thing I have endured.  You have no choice but to take that brunt.  I gave you no other.

I scream, “I’m the fucking adult, that’s why!”  But the statement contradicts itself, right?

I want to give you advice based on experience.  Mine.  But my advice sounds hollow to you.  How could it not through my drunken slur…..?

I give you everything you ask for, because it’s all I have to give you.  I have done you no favors by doing that.  And if I acquiesce to your every whim, how can you possibly give my bottle the evil eye?  It’s my twisted, manipulative trade off.

I want you to forget the times I have crawled that carpet soaking it with tears, and vomit.   Erase the memory of the wild look in my eyes as I scream, and spew vile profanity.  Try not to remember the times I have cursed God for the rotten things in my life, forgetting your presence beside me, and how that must have felt.

I want you to look at me, at what I’ve become, and take that other road.  The one that leads to enlightenment, and grace.   I want you to be rubber when I shout my injustice into your face.

I want you to know that I want to be better, that I want to thrive again.  And I want you to believe it, even when I don’t.

I want you to adhere to rules, even as I break them hourly.

I want you to have morals, even as I burn my own bridges.

I want you to be stronger, even as I fall apart in the shadows.
I want you to be happy, even as I darken furthermore.

And please, dear child, reject that God awful drug problem that has been passed down for generations now.

As hollow, or drunken, or empty as it sounds, I want to tell you how fucking amazing you are, and that you are the brightest spot in my day, my life.   I want to tell you I didn’t mean those things.  I want you to know your worth, and your brilliance, and I want you to dance in your kaleidoscope of colors.  I want to tell you how much I drink in your essence, your soul.  I want to tell you you mean so much more to me than a footnote at the bottom of a page.  I want to tell you I love you.

I wanted to say I’m sorry.

Sorry for yelling.

Sorry for drinking.

Sorry for cursing.

Sorry for leaving.

Sorry for giving up.

Sorry for leaving you alone to deal with this.

But most of all Angeleyea, I'm sorry for never giving you this letter.

Maybe someday.......I can.

Love Always,

Your Father  

Green screen.

I sit back and watch you stumble from room to room, face yellow with the pallor that has become you.

Mouth drawn, eyes rolled at half staff.

It makes my hair stand on end.

You're a cadaver-weaving with toxic legs.

I don't want you to go to bed, I'm afraid you may not wake up. I know at some point tonight I'll have to leave you to your hallucinations while I revisit mine.

I finally go home, lay in my bed with the lights out-feeling so completely empty.

I remember when I was just a little child I would imagine that there was a man at the end of my bed, in plush armchair, knife in fist.

I knew that if I would scream out to you, you would just ignore me.-I keep my mouth shut.

It was hard to sleep when you were walking the walls with your hands, reading your way through the house like Braille, knocking off pictures, breaking lamps.

You use to be strangely calm as you told me there was no one at the end of my bed.

Come to think of it, there was a night when you crawled into bed with me and described your fears to me as a child. You were drunk with prescription perdition, and you told me things no 8 year old should hear, much less comprehend. 

As you snore, there is a raspy, frightening sound. My heart raced because I was terrified you would die and the man at the end of the bed would get me. I would lay my head on your chest. You felt bone thin from drug abuse. There was no cushion where you breasts should have been, only skeleton. I would reach up and twist your hair with my thumb and index finger. It broke of in my hand, crunching under the weight of my tender touch.

Looking down, I could see that the man was motionless.

Expressionless.

Mute.

I'd drift off to sleep.

I don't remember how old I was when the man went away. I think it was the night that Nathan beat you and you were laying on the coach, blood soaked.

Hours later I would come back to you, awakened again by the incessant screeching of  your voice.

Second battle.

One night.

After I finally fell asleep, you gathered up me and Amber. She was in infinite slumber, unwilling to rise for you. We got to the neighbors and you told me that everything was okay. I was inconsolable, snot bubbly, hiccupping, bellowing shrieks.

That night you were sober with fear.

I next night I begged you to keep the light on, "Because the man watches me all night."

You were exhausted, took your apology in pill form, and passed out. The light from the hall glowed eerily against his face.

He never moved. Never breathed. Never spoke.

But this night he looked me dead in the face, whispering trial of tribulation, slow motion. Strobe lighted pictures flashing before me of my life to come; and empty house with no one there. Reels of tape replaying my future at 9,12,15,18. Me in the foreground, in front of a green screen. I watched fascinated, no longer fearing this apparition. Because the knife was not for me.

It was for them.

After his gaped-mouth silent shrieking, and what I can only describe as spontaneous combustion, he disappeared without so much as a smoke trail. There was a lonely pace at the foot of my bed. Empty, and vast. A puddle of tears where his chair once sat.

It would only be a few years into the future when I would realize that night was the night that I lost my best angel.