my dad didn’t walk out
he just stopped showing up
and called it love.

“i don’t think he meant to hurt you”
my mom says one night over cold takeout
her voice tired like she’s run this loop before

she has.

“you know how he is”
she says it like it’s supposed to make sense
like that kind of sentence has ever held me

i don’t want to argue with her
not her
she was there when he wasn’t
she held the pieces he never saw break
but still
she tries to excuse the man.

“he worked a lot” she adds
“things were complicated”

and i want to scream
i was a child. not a complication.

she picks at her food
like maybe she can find the right words
buried somewhere between the grains of rice

i let the silence stretch long
almost cruel
trying to read her face to my best ability.
working my eyes around her stress riddled face.

“i know you’re trying to defend him”
i say eventually
“but i don’t think he ever tried for me”

she winces
but she doesn’t deny it

that’s the closest thing to validation i’ll ever get.

he used to know how to smile
used to know how to carry me
until i got too big
or he got too small in other ways

we didn’t stop talking all at once
it was a slow erosion
like sand slipping under me.
one day i looked behind me and realized
he wasn’t holding my hand anymore.

he argued more than he listened
corrected more than he cared
and when i tried to reach out
he treated me like a stranger
accusing him of something unprovable

i learned who he really was in whispers
affairs
lies
his actions and inactions

and suddenly every cold moment made sense

he is trying now
a little.
half thought texts
casual invitations

like we’re peers who lost touch
not a father and daughter
with history caked in dust and silence

but i’m older now
the door i waited at for years
has rotted off its hinges
and i’ve turned my back to it.

i no longer sit at the threshold hoping he will return.

i don’t want what he’s offering
now that it’s easy to give.

i don’t want to sit across from him
pretending there was never an absence.

i don’t want to teach him
how to be what he was supposed to be
before i knew how to speak.

i say i don’t have a father
and when people ask..
i don’t explain

because i’m done explaining.
done hoping.
done shaping myself into someone
he might finally pick.

i paint a portrait of him anyway
it’s not beautiful
but it’s honest..

i sign only my name in the corner
he didn’t earn the right to be credited

sometimes i still dream of him
of who he could have been
of the version that showed up

and when i wake, i’m disgusted
by the small girl who still hasn’t learned
her dad changed some time ago.

even in my dreams
he’s already walking away

so i stopped calling
stopped chasing

dad is not his name.
not anymore.

and i am not his to claim.