Today is the day I miss you most because I’m reminded that you’re gone.
Not not here, but gone.
No more on the other side of the phone,
other side of the mountains,
other side of the sea.

And it hurts.
It hurts more now than it did then.
Because it becomes more true with every day that goes.
I do things you’ll never know about,
Write poems that are terrible and some that are awesome and some that are so good it sucks that I can’t show you.

I remember being in the car next to you,
you were driving me to school because I’d missed the bus and had to walk all the way back up the hill and you had to get out of bed and drive me,
We weren’t getting along great back then.
I was that age,
And you were that scared.
You didn’t know what to do except yell and pull out what hair you had left.
And I was learning how to run away.
I never got far, but it was just enough to terrify you,
As it should’ve.

I was sitting next to you in the car, writing a poem as we drove

‘I’m watching my life go by at a real time pace of 30km an hour.’
Or something like that, all angst melodrama, and frustrated 14 year old.

But it goes faster than that,
I wish I’d known that then.
I would have hugged you hard,
Kissed you goodbye every time I climbed out of the car.
That’s the problem with perspective,
Until I got some,
I didn’t have any.

But I’m so glad I had you.
I love you, papa.