A Letter Without an Address

To my two daughters — the ones I hold in memory, because I cannot hold them in my arms.

A Letter Without an Address

Every morning I type "good morning,"

and every morning I delete it,

because there is nowhere to send it.

I keep the phone's ringer on —

just in case.

It doesn't ring.

I remember you small.

I remember a hand that fit inside my whole palm.

I was the one who held you to sleep.

I sang the same song

until your breathing slowed and your eyelids fell.

I still know it by heart —

only now I sing it into a dark room,

and no one falls asleep beside me anymore.

These hands learned the slow circles on your belly

when it hurt and you couldn't yet say where.

I soothed a pain you had no word for.

Now you carry pains I will never hear of —

and there is no hand left to soothe them.

I was the one who checked under the bed for the dark.

Now the dark is between us,

and I can't look beneath it and say:

don't be afraid, there's nothing there.

We took long walks —

your small steps, two to my one.

Now I walk alone,

and my hand still closes on the air

where a smaller hand used to be.

One nineteen, one sixteen —

numbers that keep growing without me.

I no longer know your handwriting.

I don't know the song you play on repeat —

I, who knew every song you were ever sung to sleep with.

And the thing I fear most:

that I am forgetting the sound of your laughter —

and that you are forgetting that someone, far away,

loves you every single day, without one word in return.

You are my light in a tunnel that will not end.

My signpost, though there is no road.

My oxygen, though the forest was cut down.

I still say "goodnight" into an empty room,

hoping that somewhere in the universe

the words still reach you.

The worst is not the missing.

The worst is that you are growing up without me —

that you are becoming someone,

and I stand behind a shut door

and will not even hear you grow.

I am healing. For you, among other reasons.

And that is the cruelest part:

the healthier I get,

the more clearly I see what I am losing.

I still make two beds that no one unmakes.

I leave a light on,

in case one of you

should ever knock.

You are my greatest happiness

and the one treasure I have — and do not have.

I keep you where no one can take you:

in memory, since I cannot hold you in my arms.

And if we still have even a sliver of time —

please, let us wake before it is over.

Let us make it in time.

Come back. Or let me come back.

The door is open. The light is on.

And I still know that song by heart.

I love you.

Dad