31 years

You lay in your bed,
pale and weak,
near your death.
I can sense all your pain
through your shortness of breath.
As tears fill your eyes
you reach for my hand.
I step back.
It has been 31 years
since we have spoken
yet I can recall every word last exchanged.
Your pain doesn’t hurt me.
Instead I wonder,
does it feel the same as my own?
Is your heart abandoned?
Your pride slaughtered?
Your love betrayed?
Does regret plague your mind?
Do you remember the day
your words pushed me too far?
And I left you,
a wreck,
tears on my cheeks,
sobs in my throat,
questions in my mind,
my broken heart in my palm,
my family shattered.
For 31 years
I could not forgive,
I could not forget,
I could not go home.
Now I’ve been called here
to say goodbye to
someone I said goodbye to long ago
and I’m not the same girl I once was.
I am grown now
and I’ve grown away from you
not part of you,
like most would do.
But do not be fooled.
I great because of you,
because I had to.
I learned to grow
out of isolation,
without love,
across a page of family...
blank.
And when my children ask
who their great grandfather is
I say he is sick,
he does not know right from wrong,
he is depressed.
They look at me
with confused eyes,
innocent smiles,
wondering why it is
that I cannot love my grandfather
like they do their own.
I cannot explain to them
that I don’t want to.
There is too much pain,
too much suffering
in my past
and it is not theirs.
It is mine to bare
with the grandfather who lies before me
dying, pleading, begging
for my love and forgiveness
31 years too late.