i'm sorry, dad, for both of us

you once said to me when I was a kid, "what happened, we used to be buds"

and I thought to myself: "we never were"

you left my mom when I was barely a teenager

and I hated you for it

you left her in the living room crying when I came home from school

you left her like her parents left her when they put her up for adoption

you left us because if you didn't "you were going to die"

and so you left

and maybe you had to, maybe it couldn't have been any other way

but that didn't mean it didn't hurt

that didn't mean it meant maybe the one person that I needed wasn't there for so many years

and now decades have gone by and we are far apart

and time will not go back

so how do we go forward?