Happy to See Him

 I have come home empty

 from years of travelling with the weight of your expectations

 I left them at the altar beside your prayers 

with a pile of things that I don't need anymore

the scars you inflicted in the Name of Love are fading

Along with my desire to carry your name

I stand before  a tombstone

to roll over the memory of my screams

my Sadness

my ache 

for a life outside the one I know

I kneel before my childhood

to grind to dust the effigy you mistake for a son 

truth still seeps from the open wounds 

that burn as righteously as your anger

at night it leaks from my ears as I dream of a father unlike my own

happy to welcome me home

but I wake up to your shadow beneath my door

that is where the nightmare begins