Shredded To Pieces

My father,
Who shredded himself to pieces trying to give me everything.
If a dead body were to fall under my name he’d be the first to take the blame.
Or if a moving train were to stare me dead in the face, his love alone would be strong enough to halt it so it’d touch me with grace.
The man who would bring the moon and stars down if it brought a smile to his little girl’s face.
I wish I didn’t neglect you in every way possible,
for schmucks that didn’t care if the ground beneath me swallowed me up tomorrow.
Meanwhile, you would lay beneath me so that I’d have a softer blow.

Oh, what I’d give to just hold you again.
If only you knew about everything.
The way the girl who’d only fall asleep in your arms blames herself for what happened.
The way it pains her to look at herself.
The way it absolutely mortifies her to accept that you are gone, and there is nothing and no one that could change that.

When I looked at your lifeless body, she died.
The girl you would dance around the kitchen with.
The girl who loved to sit and watch crime shows
with you, because she knew as long as you were there she was safe.

The girl that prayed she wouldn’t be alive to watch you take your last breath, took hers with you.

If only you knew.
How much I cried that night, my heart sank, being the deepest, hardest pain I’ve ever been through.
It was like a stab in the heart.
And then I was balling my eyes out, screaming into my pillow, wondering what I did.

Your death created this indefinite void, that would never see the light you illuminated in her heart.
Quickly she realized, it could never be filled again.
I’m shredded to pieces, Papa.