I thought I would post this poem, “Father’s Day Forgotten,” in the spirit of the day to honor dads. One note: the poem is fictional; the only connection with my real father is that he once owned a green couch when he lived in a small house on Mohawk Street in Rome, New York, after my parents divorced in the early 1980s.

A photo of my father and me following my Confirmation in 1984.

The poem appeared in my 2012 poetry collection Vestiges, published by Kelsay Books/Alabaster Leaves Publishing, and later in Dreaming of Lemon Trees: Selected Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2019).

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads and father figures out there.

“Father’s Day Forgotten”

Daddy and Christi parted ways at a bus depot
In the early morning hours.
No big scene, just a kiss on the cheek,
Then she turned around and was gone for good—
Hopping aboard a Trailways bus headed westbound for Chicago.
And she never looked back.

Daddy went home to his beer bottle and sofa seat,
And he drew the living room curtains on the rest of the world,
Letting those four eggshell walls close in and swallow him up,
Wasting away in three empty rooms and a bath.

And the memories can’t replace his lost daughter and wife.
So he tries not to remember his mistakes
Or how he drove them away.
Instead, he recalls Halloween pumpkins
Glowing on the front porch,
Training wheels moving along the uneven sidewalk,
Little hands reaching for bigger ones in the park,
And serving Saltine crackers and milk
To chase away the goblins that haunted
Dreams in the middle of the night.

Now Christi has a life of her own,
And she lets the answering machine catch
Daddy’s Sunday afternoon phone call.
She never picks up and rarely calls back.
So Daddy returns to the green couch
Pockmarked with cigarette burns.
He closes his eyes, opens the door to his memory vault
And watches the pictures play in slow-motion.
He rewinds again and again,
without noticing the film has faded
and the little girl has stepped out of the frame.