Stealing Your Future Poem by Seamus O' Brian

When tearful pleas turn to anger
That moment when the tears stop
The head comes up sharply
And the eyes are cold with anger.

Not you.
Not me.

The legs that couldn't even dangle
Over the edge of the couch.
The eyes that peered out
From under the brims of
A hundred hats made more
Beautiful by the wonder of your eyes.

Eyes that repel what I am to you now
The one who keeps you from your future
Who holds back what I could give if I
Loved you enough to trust you more.

Words that are etched into the screen
By the knives of a heart that burns
In angry disbelief and questions
All that has come before
With words paralyzed blankly
Upon a silent screen.

A thousand lives live and die
Between each blink of a cursor
That accuses me of patriarchal cruelty
As a father's heart dies inside beating
Like that cursor, and a thousand
Questions course with each beat

A thousand doubts, a thousand whys.
And I don't know how to be a father
But to trust the voice that love speaks
With into my heart to proceed with care
To fight for her heart, even though
Fighting looks like holding back
The one thing you ask.

To place my hand upon the place
Where pain strangles my heart
And yet,
To trust the quiet
Whisper of God.

I know that on the other side
of this mountain of what we wish we knew
You are trudging through the tortured
Machinations of your day,

Just like me, a pair of ghosts
With dire responsibilities laid
Across our shoulders like the beams
Of a cross, with the wooden stake of
Fear thrust through our hearts

And blood and water and pain
Come gushing out while the thief
Of my conscience calls out to me
To heal myself and my children-
If I am really a father-

And I cannot.