POETRY | ‘THE CRUELEST LIE’ ( A DEDICATION TO MY LATE FATHER) BY KATE TAYLOR

The Cruelest lie

Resides

In that moment between awakening

And fully open­ing my eyes

That dupli­cit­ous lie

That tells me

You didn’t leave me

You didn’t die.

 

And I dreamt last night that you were still alive

Until the harsh dawn broke through

The ruth­less truth of light

It shattered my dreams

And my dis­tor­ted sight

That I’d held to so close

That I’d held to so tight

And the tears welled in my eyes

Then streamed down my face

Like the heav­ens had just opened

And you were fall­ing from the skies

 

So prim­al were my cries

But nobody heard me

The sor­row when my truth is denied

But nobody sees me

The pain imprisoned in my mind

But this is agony of anoth­er kind

Not sure I have the strength to survive

My heart, just like yours that day,

Can­not be revived.

And I wish I could talk to you just one more time

I don’t know if you knew I loved you

And that pain pumps through my bloodline

I may not have done enough

But Dad, truly I tried

And I feel robbed

Because I nev­er got a chance to say goodbye

 

And that is some­thing that I can­not rectify

I just want to go back and freeze time

But instead time betrays me

That frag­ment and vis­ion of you is no longer mine

And that, in essence is the Cruellest Lie

The one in which you are still alive

The one in which you did not die.

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