tango

I am caught in an emotional tango, of the wanting and the not wanting of the very same thing, I know that everything is for the best. I know how lucky I am to have Sierra all to myself. and I am so grateful that I never ever have to hand her over to someone else. She has never left my sight, I have never been without her, not for an hour, an afternoon, or a night.

but yesterday I hurt so much, you will never ever know, the hollow jabbing ache, that your smiling face caused me.

You seem so happy in all of your ignorance and bliss, like you have the whole world in the palm of your hand,

and yet you and I both know that you are hiding so many painful secrets.

and my biggest joy, is your greatest shame.

we are ghosts hidden behind the gleaming whites of your eyes.

and though I am mostly healed, from all the pain, so much pain, I have taken on the empty space already present in sierra,


and tried so hard to fill it.

but it is shredding my heart to pieces. to know.
that she is already so aware
of what she does not have.

and points it out to me over and over again.
in all of her innocence.


she quietly said "daddy" and pointed at you and your "future wife"
beaming so happily into the twinkling las vegas night,
unaware of just who might be on the other side of that photograph.