Emmanuel

How shameful of me to proudly declare you my father only after 

Your body lay low at rest in a freshly dug grave.

How horrible to never realize the truth to the Sunday mornings and late dinners 

Until I no longer taste carefully curated food with which you created a family.

How dreadful of me to mourn you

Though not beg your apologies while I still had the chance,

 when you were still breathing.

Emmanuel, I used to tease you when I was a child 

you were mildly embarrassed 

Your middle name ringing out into four syllables 

Its name means God is with us. 

I didn’t feel God when I fell to my knees and wept 

when I learned of the accident that stole you from us.

I might see him peeking out from behind the clouds now 

Perhaps it was ill suited of me to be angry at him for all these years 

After all, we all have free will,

Maybe it hurt God when he was watching,

Perhaps he was saddened when the police officers came to your house and told us, your family

I wonder if God cries, or if he has ever cried like I did that day 

I think he would have wept at your funeral.

Regardless, none of it makes any difference and the past is dead and buried 

Though hardly a night goes by where I do not dream of you hunched over in our sunroom

Crying, praying, 

I wonder what you harbored behind the eyes and the depths of complexities of losses a father must carry.

I think of you somewhere now in heaven

Standing in a sunroom smiling, laughing.

Guilt wracks me for letting my ego prevent us from the last few months we could have shared as a family

Emmanuel 

Although god seems so far on the days that I miss you the most 

Where regret wounds my heart with jagged and rusted knives 

I miss you, I love you, Emmanuel 

But God, if you truly are listening to me- 

Is there anything I could beg of you to let me see him one last time?