I wish I could have found a better way to be a better son. I didn't do the best I could like I told myself I did when the guilt tried to push me home. (But I tell myself the truth now.)

If you were still alive, I'd still never come up that mountain because fifteen minutes is far too far to drive when you're as lazy as I am. I would wish my good intentions for you to interpret through a dial tone, whisper, "I love you,” and wonder after I'd hung up the phone.

"Well my son, he's a traveler, and he walks the same vein, and he speaks like a flood, and he carries my name, and when he comes home I mask all of my pain so that he want to visit me again." (Or that's what my sister will say.)

I wish I could have found a reason to be content, and been a kid for as long to you wished I would have, but you started missing me the moment I was conceived. I know because I always live in the future until I call it "now" and "here" is not a place that I've ever been.

It kills me, and it killed you. I'm done pretending that I've ever made the best of my time (I tell myself the truth now.)

If you were still alive you'd still lay alone on the ground day in and day out, doubting that I love you enough to drive fifteen minutes to spend fifteen minutes of the two months I'm home in our home. And you're right: I don't.

"Well my son, he's an author, and I've been reading his poems, and he writes like a fire, and he is bone of my bones, and when he's around I know that I know that I am the reason I am always alone.

But I don't know how to fix it.”