Prayer

Daughter, crying herself to sleep, again
empty voicemail messages to her missing mother

Andrea's singing plays in the background as they struggle into dreams,
Dreams that I hope will turn out good.

Rage turns to disgust and then to emptiness.
I stroke her hair softly and Lauren holds her hand as her body shudders in tears. Nothing can replace a parent who disappears without explaining why to their children.

I can see the scars on my daughters heart, forming and reforming. I try to stop them, but I can't.Someone else might not understand.

I do.

Got my own scarred heart to prove it.

I'd do anything to prevent it happening to my daughters. My wife would too.

Their mom is.... broken.
And everytime she gets close to repairing herself, she throws herself back off a new cliff to shatter herself anew.

Everyone's got a hobby. Hers is seeing just how close to self-destruction she can get without ever going over the edge completely. Of course, meanwhile, this involves lots of drugs, angst, and self-absorbtion.

I'd kill the bitch myself if I thought it would help.

It wouldn't.

But it would sure be nice to visit some form of retribution on the person who causes my children- HER CHILDREN- a constant stream of pain.

Times like this bring a man to prayer-

I have lots of prayers. Some humble, some hopeful.

Never vain, never selfish. I've got NO belief in a god that aids the shallow.

And I've not much more faith in any prayer of hope.

I've got a prayer of wrath, though. Only a fool would desire it.

But when you hurt someone's children, the deep, torturous way that she has, it does something awful to a person's soul.

So, my one prayer, the one I don't believe in but desperately desire -
is this-

I pray for hell.

I pray for a hell to exist-

a Hell that WILL give some Old testament justice to the parents who abandon their children.

If hell exists, believe me, I'll burn as well, I'm sure - for a thousand simple travesties and a million outright sins. I'd take my eternal damnation in a minute, though- just to know Andrea would be there too- burning for what she did to our kids.

I have lots of prayers. Some humble, some hopeful.

But seeing those tears in Amy's eyes when she cries for her mother- there's only one prayer in my bible.

All she has to do is make one call to a little girl. But, as with most of the world's miserable bastards, even the simplest gesture is too much