What's Stopping You?

I lie still and breathless
Not to be heard over the lies
and regrets barely audible on the phone

"You could have called, you could have reached out"
She says, not to me, not to me
"Were you drinking? No? Were you high? Are you sure
"You want to lie to your own daughter?
"I understand drinking, I know what it's like to be high"
but she doesn't understand a father lying to his own daughter

Even after all these years

I lie still and breathless,
A secret kept, twice her age
A story older than that
As familiar as the curves of her love-soaked flesh

She calls him Father, while I claim the intimate
Daddy
Though neither of us ever raised her
Above her own soaring fantasies
Of a rainbow hued acceptance
Of someone cherishing all of her
Not least the parts that run
That clench her fists and hide her tears

She urges him again, "Just a message, just a text,
"Just once, be a father when I call"

What a low bar I have set
To treat her better than any man ever has
To love her as she deserves
I learned that trick the first day I glimpsed evil
I fought that battle the first day I knew apathy

Decades and lovers and a hundred mended hearts before She
Was even a bad idea at the bottom of his bottle

She gave me her body, hoping for love in exchange
and I took it, for it was a fine body
and a familiar bargain
and I call myself a better man than some