Daddy, can you answer the door?

I've been knocking since I was young.

I've been told you live so many places.

And every answer was just "the wrong door".

But now I'm at the threshold

And I know you are beyond the redwood oak slab,

Locked and keeping me out.

It stops me from gazing into your eyes

That have become my eyes.

It keeps me from knowing who you are.

I knock so softly at first,

Thinking about how many Father's Days I didn't discover.

I knew your name, yet I didn't know your person.

I knew your profession, yet I never waited

At the dinner table for you to come home from work.

I knock louder next,

Hoping you'd stop ignoring it and just

Find it in you to come to the door.

You don't have to hug me.

You don't have to even talk to me.

You don't have to love me.

But I want to meet the man who runs through my veins.

Do I look more like you like everyone says?

Does this never-ending depression come from you?

Or how about my temper?

Did you suffer from such a short fuse too?

I bang on the door, screaming out to you,

"Dad!"

Walk away from the television for just a damn minute!

Tell your wife I'll stop bothering if you just answer the door.

And tell her I'm sorry,

I didn't ask for this.

Tell your children I was here first.

Why do they know you but not me?

Tell them I'm yours too, so why won't you let me be?

I bang on the door, screaming out to you,

"Dad!"

You are ignoring me.

I am a figment of your past.

Do you really think you can just ignore a person away?

I'm not going to disappear.

I am still going to stand here, tearing at the door between us.

I'll get my sister to help if I can't do it myself.

Don't you want to see her too?

We can work together until we reach the man

That we're supposed to call 'Daddy.'

We don't want to love,

Not even befriend.

We just want to know.

We just want to know who you are and where we started.

We just want to know before it's too late.

Before you change before us.

Change into The Father.

And then The Dead Beat.

And then The Sperm Donor.

Before I stop knocking.