a letter to the father from the unbroken man, resplendent in his shame.

i cried.

my tears were ionized vodka, a drunkenness roaring out of my body, craving attention and love. i still held to you then, a jeweled torch in the shadows of my life and a salve for the precise hieroglyphs engraved on my legs. but i still bled, and i still wept, hoping to find heaven's gate before the last of my hope died.

i lived.

there came a day where my faith went on the wind, and i no longer felt a spirit in the old hymns. i knew the chords by heart and i loved to sing, but it was only a fancy to soothe my heart and manufacture chills on my spine. there was no personage. it was an empty vibrance in depression's depths, and i would rather go without. and so i did.

it was a long, slow road to being alive, and i still walk it. and i think that i am more proud, having walked it without you. i do not doubt heaven or the angels and the saints. i doubt only your love for me.

i have done without love, and many other things besides. you are not the only pledge that i have accused of faithlessness on the long march; though you were the most beloved. i looked to you to bring the sun into focus, to place coins in my hand, to energize this tired skeleton with a raison d'être. and you failed me.

i can now see the light at the tunnel's end; but i do not know if i should love you or thank you; or if i should love and thank myself. there is still evil you have instilled in me, a perspective of hatred and abstinence that i must learn to break. i swore my youth by the cross, and by the cross was my spirit crucified by a real world that has no need of you.

you are a beautiful lie. or maybe real. you have said nothing from one extreme to another, nor have you declared yourself in simple words and deeds. but i can no longer live in penance for uncommitted sins, hoping one day that death will be better than life.

i must live.