On my 18th birthday I was out with friends

Doing what raucous teenagers do, we loitered

And ate rubbish and finally went home, laughing

At something stupid. My father had returned

Home early so he could be with me on my day.

I saw the hurt in his eyes but he never said a word

That was not his way.

But that was the last birthday together, his or mine.

I would never again sit at the breakfast table

And find a parcel waiting for me neatly tied

And his unmistakable script, “darling Ipsy”

Would forever loiter in yellowed pages

Forgotten in reams of time.

That little girl is now lost: thrown under

The wheels of daily life; Yet sometimes I wonder

Did he abandon me when he died, or did I?