I stagger through the gate and my daughter comes running,

“Daddy! Daddy!” she screams running into my waiting arms.

I lift her,

I throw her up in the air,

I see her flying,

I want to break her fall,

But my heart breaks with my little girl’s arm,

As she makes contact with the unforgiving concrete.

 

It is the lowest moment in every alcoholic’s life,

That moment when you break your own heart,

Because you ran out of hearts to break a long time ago.

My wife is screaming,

My daughter is screaming,

The whole world is screaming.

The walls are screaming,

Saying,

“Aren’t you tired of making the world hate you?”

 

I crash on the couch where I spend most of my life.

I know my life is passing me by,

Because I’m either passed out at the couch,

Or I’m somewhere drinking in preparation to pass out on the couch.

My daughter,

Her arm hidden by the cast is saying,

“Daddy, let me take your shoes off.”

 

I am a grown man,

Stretched out on the couch,

In my dirty shoes.

My one handed daughter,

My forgiving child,

She wants to help me so I ask,

“Why do you love me when I don’t even love myself?”

“I love you enough for the both of us daddy.”

 

Oh God I want to die.

I want to die

So I can wake up in a world where I deserve her love.

And my wife’s.

Why does she put up with me?

I want to die

So I can wake up in a world where I am sober.

In a world where my daughter doesn’t have to smell the liquor in me

Every time she hugs her old man.

In a world where I can make my wife happy again.

 

“Do you love your bottle more than you love us?”

My wife asks and I can’t speak.

What can I say?

My family is my whole world,

But how do I explain,

Why I neglected my whole world

For poison that kills me a little with every sunrise?

 

One dark day my daughter will come to me and say,

“Daddy I can’t watch you do this to yourself. Not anymore. I’m leaving.”

I am so sorry baby that I make it so hard for you to love me.