A Letter to my Father, the Night Before Christmas

I took the pall from off your casket
I’ve worn it all these years
It hides me from the many monsters
And soaks up all my tears.

But I have not gone on to make
Anyone quite so proud
I’ve hid and stood and born my pain
with nothing said out loud.

I wish that I could tell you something
Or show you something that I’d done
But I am choked beneath this pall
That once so hid me from this sun.

And all the years I might have loved
Or played to make the angels weep
I stalled beneath this pall of yours
And could not pray my soul to keep.

I do not know the way back home
Or maybe I have never been
But every search has left me hollow
Every fall and every sin.

I had so many questions hid
But now they seem to all be gone
And you won’t answer anyhow
and I will have to soldier on.

I feel a great wide heavy ache
And do not have a heart or tongue
And with the pall that I have worn
I know that I might soon be hung.