i can feel his gaze on the back of my neck

his emotionless eyes burning holes through my back

i like to think he is filled with guilt and remorse that his daughter has given up on him

but i know it is all the same as it has always been.

i like to tell myself that as i sit ignoring him

refusing to try to warm his ice cold home again

that he wonders if he had been there all these years

if he had been the father a daughter desires 

if i would be smiling and laughing as i used to.

i know, however, that he rearguards not my silence

he deserves his loneliness 

over the years his anger built a wall brick by cement brick between him and the world

he did this to himself and i tried to be on his side

but he threw me over with the rest of humanity

and though i like to think that now after such time he wants me back

but i know the second i get close hell tare me apart piece by piece till I'm nothing.

i like to think that hell come to his scenes

and that there will be a day when i run into his arms

letting tears soak his shirt as i cry out that he is my daddy and I'm his little girl

and i like to think that hell hug back and say he was sorry and he wanted to be my daddy again and he loved me

god when was the last time he said he loved me...

i like to think that one day the man who used to sing to me as he rocked me to sleep every night

and who paint pictures of me in the rays of sun cascading through our kitchen window

and who cooked my favorite dinners and played with my hair and stroked my nose and wiped my tears when i was sad

will come back.

but i know that man has died

and become a hollow cavity

empty of the love he used to have.