Bastardy

Ask yourself how many times in a given day you say the word dad.
If the answer is less than one, than this poem is for you.
If someone asks you how your relationship with your father is.
And you answer more to your disembodied dad than to them that
You wished that he had told you beforehand that he intended you to
be
A seed that grew without his watchful eye from the get-go
So that you could’ve known better than to try to save a place
For him in this space that wants to call itself a heart.
This is for you.
This is for expectations turning into doubts and finally
    hopelessness after too many
Silent years of missed Christmases and disregarded birthdays.
Silent years because children are wishbones that break without a
    sound.
Apologies can never quite cut it when a child is broken.
Broken children walking around like cracked funhouse mirrors.
Fragmented and distorted.
This is for sometimes wishing that you could be more angry than you
    are disappointed
Because anger at least keeps you warm at night.
A burning man is better than a man that has to thaw.
And I’ve seen them all.
Firemen and icemen propagating broken children.
And endless cycle of bastards propagating more bastards.
Men who never really stopped being boys having kids.
Never really settling down with responsibility but living their
    lives
A constant competition of who can get the most fucks, but when
    bastards
Fuck it’s the children that are screwed.
Wasting the future’s time for the present’s impulses.
Seeds cast here and there like a germination fair.
A carnival of weakness and resentment.
To this day I vowed never to bring another life into this world.
Not while men are raging like wildfires and blizzards.
How does one live as a child of a natural disaster?
Branded by scarlet letters embroidered on the skin as everyone pokes
    and pities.
This is for the broken children.
The modern day Frankenstein monsters procreated out of hubris with
    no intentions of love.
Stitched together with expectations of being equivalent to the
    nuclear family, but we are most certainly
Only nuclear.
Mushroom clouds rising as high as we can into space to
    strangle our wishes out of stars.
Because broken children learn that no one will tell you your worth.
What slipped through your cracks you must refill.
Cause you are broken but not shattered.
Your duty is to yourself.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.