You Have No Idea What You've Done Here

You have no idea what you’ve done here.

The holes in your eyes say otherwise –

reeling when you hear the walls

in her voice no longer weakening –

your holes reveal themselves heart-deep in cold wells

where a growth of darkness fells your feeling.

Children: secondary losses there.

You have a vague idea of what you’ve left here:

from the frequency of your calls,

I’d say you get she’s worthy of regret.

Your wife, you have no idea

what you’ve done to her eyes.

Their quivering hazel writhes to shine,

afraid to sing the song of her soul one note wrong.

And your daughters

have learned the solitudes of her sadness,

why she sleeps so often with the door closed to her room

and from Mother’s tearful intervals of breathing,

we learned how to wonder at the love of other families

and how they do it right.

You should know

girls tend to pine for what could’ve been,

when fathers leave them, in the faces of men

that too often turn to their marauding again.

We have learned from Mother’s past waffling

to wrestle with whether or not we should forget you

to put an end to the dreams you’ve put off for years

fouling into tragedies.

But you haven’t a clue when I call you

of the many crimes of hurt I forgive, like Mother did,

to not feel like a fool when I say:

“I love you, too.”