Me and Him

~

as the anniversary approaches

I become yet another year

older than my father,

I don’t expect congratulations, 

it’s not a celebration I look forward to, 

just another year where my face 

supplants his in the bathroom mirror 

causing me to think that he never looked 

this old, this creased,

I am forever his senior, 

now by more than a decade,

neither of us believed in paradise 

so thankfully there will be no awkward 

future reunions, although

infrequently in my dreams 

I know it’s him, but never see his face 

and I am always still his child,

so, another year in which 

I age glides by,

people have stopped saying 

that I look like him

although some of his mannerisms 

still haplessly give me away, 

of course, whilst I’ve missed him 

nigh on these forty years

I can’t see my father’s image 

any more, I’ve left him behind, 

as he left me far too early

*

© GRS 8/24