The Abandoning 

“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity…” --Henry David Thoreau

When I left I didn’t look back, walking down the tunnel to the aircraft with bulging suitcase--the one you bought me for high school graduation--a strange gift.  I didn’t look back on purpose--of course that purpose wasn’t clear through clenched-jaw tears.  Wasn’t clear until now--20 years later as I stand in the backyard pulling weeds.

It was anti-climatic, but revenge is always a better idea than reality.  That’s why--revenge.  But it was a kamikaze type; I had no better weapon than my own destruction.

I left you the way you left me crying in the playpen, the crib, the dark...a spectator to dysfunction, watching you run out the door to your mistress rendezvous.  Left me with a propped up bottle.  Did you think you would get away with that?  So rampant, egotistical, apathetic. 

I was left unheard.  Voiceless.  Silence became my solace.  When those that should hear you refuse to listen, you stop speaking aloud, you become your own.

And you don’t turn around.  You left me, I left you.  That is our father and son relationship.   

What does a father think as he watches his son depart in a moment that encapsulates a lifetime?  Sees him swallowed by the sky; what did you think, father?

Are we even now?  Are we ever even?  What happened to you for you to abandon me?  The kind of abandonment covered up by cash, power, denial--the kind of abandonment that leaves you on a strange boat in darkness while it drinks the night away--the kind that never plays ball with you or asks you how you feel.  

When I walked down the runway without looking back did you finally feel--were overwhelmed by darkness, the way I was--did you finally feel enough despair to make us even?