A reflection on cardiac exhaustion

How to write of disappointment

When I have lived with it for so long

My mind tells me that there isn’t anything special

To say on paper

How to put words to the thought 

Of every time I had to fill in the blanks

Before realizing that I would never be fully able 

To finish the canvas you stopped painting halfway through 

It wasn’t and isn’t my job to capture the details you were too lazy to draw

How to spell apathy

Without registering that 5/6ths of the word is your surname

And understanding that — to some extent —

You are the human embodiment of overcompensated promises without enough delivery 

How to undo from my memory

My association of red dresses with you

Because you bought me one out of guilt in May

After greeting my belly with your belt so often I thought my period

Was my body internally bleeding

Asking for all the times I felt uncomfortable wearing red on Valentine’s day

How to be a normal human being

That doesn’t think of my dreams as out of reach

Out of spite for every time you sat me by your side and allowed me to aspire

I’d whisper to my subconscious, I want to be an astronaut-woman-pilot-engineer-mechanic

Before you’d tell me that it was a tad bit inappropriate to exist as anything not imagined in your 20-year life plan for me

How to celebrate Christmas and Easter

Free from the need to wake up in the middle of the night

To see if you left before saying goodbye

Without the comprehension that seeing you as often as I saw Santa Claus or Jesus was atypical 

And that the Casio watch you got me was never

Much compensation for you being unapologetically absent for a majority of the year

The dictionary defines indifference

As the lack of interest, concern, or sympathy

But I think there is more to its meaning than simply not caring

It is the body’s defense mechanism 

After caring so much, it kills you on the inside

So your heart says no more

And the fires that once blossomed turn into embers

The noise and bustle in the head become emptiness

And now my heart no longer beats, no longer falters

When I say the word, Father.