I knew that I fucked up
as soon as the money was gone
and I finally came crawling back to the motel
hours later
wasted

There she was standing
outside of the door -my baby
my little girl my
sweet strong sentinel.

She was crying she was so
furious that it made me want to
cry
and take everything back
all of it
ever.

“You said you were going to change…”
She shoved me and I
stumbled back and over a parking curb.
It might have been slapstick funny if it
wasn’t so damn pathetic.

“But look at you, same as always. The funny thing is
that I wanted so badly to believe in you. It’s all that
I ever wanted and you couldn’t even give me that and I
can’t do this anymore.

I just simply can’t
so if you want to keep drinking and killing yourself,
well here.”

She lifted the half-empty bottle of vodka I had stashed under the bed
and threw it at the ground.
It smashed so close that I felt shards of the
broken glass
sting my face.

“There you fucking go.” She said
and then her back was turned and she was walking off
toward the night highway-
my baby girl,
my sweet strong angel.

I tried to get up but the gravity of everything
was all off and I had to crawl over to the wall
and once I was finally up I started hoofing
the door to my room.

“FUUUUCK!” I screamed, kicked it harder.
“FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!”

Some asshole opened the door beside me
spit out his cigarette and said,
“Christ, Old Timer, keep it down.
She was too young for you anyway.”

“Oh, go to fuck.” I replied.
“That’s my daughter.”

I stumbled into the room
slammed the door
and started looking through my bag
hoping that she didn’t find those little
airplane mini bottles of booze I had
wrapped in my underwear.

There might also be some left
in the baggie I shoved
behind the toilet.

I hoped to God there was some.

I wasn’t anywhere near
sober enough
to handle this.

And I wasn’t sober at all.