I walk in the living room and find you already asleep on the couch.  Your hot breath reeks with the aroma of beer and cigarettes.  To me it means nothing as a faint glisten of drool glides down your chin.  I pick up the warm and empty blue mountain can and toss it in the trash.  I walk back with a hope of being able to get you off of the couch this time.

Years pass by, and again I stand over you as you sleep on the couch.  My mother stands at my side. The mask she wears is beginning to break and wear with disappointment and sadness.  She tells me that she can handle it and tells me to be on my way.  But I don’t want to leave; my naïve mind assumes that if the giant on the couch awakes, he will want to spend time with me.

Years pass by and that couch lay empty.  You are not even here to kiss me goodnight or check under my bed for monsters.  I run my hand across the soft and worn brown leather, and think of the days when I used to run my dimpled fingers through your hair after a trip to the barber.  I am brought back to the days when you’d walk through the door after each 24 hour shift, and I would jump into your inviting and protecting arms like the little girl I was.  But now I am grown and this sofa lays empty.  My memories linger for a moment longer and then I continue out the front door.

I stand at the hood of my dull, yet, silver car.  The only thing left that has any connection between me and you.  I stand where your lousy vehicles once rested and realize now that your ’97 TransAm, that you had so many dreams of rebuilding, which used to be the coolest car on the street was really the most pathetic. With its black, cracked, and rotting interior, to the stench it left with every turn of the key.  I used to miss the adventures we would take in it, always jamming out to the worst of Nickelback and the best of Def Leppard.  But now I don’t.  The lyrics to those songs just remind me of a time when all you had on your mind were the blue mountain cans sitting in the refrigerator.

What I miss are the days when you used to be actually be there, when your presence at the kitchen table was enough to make my entire week.  Or whether we were just watching random movies together on the couch and arguing with each other for hogging the overflowing bowl of buttery popcorn.

You were my daddy and I was your little girl.  But now your girl is grown, and you are just a person who walked out of her life.  To this day, that fridge remains empty of those blue mountain cans.  And that dull brown leather sofa stays in position, paying no attention to the absence it holds.  The couch now only bears the weight of the dog, who at night seems to have that same glimmer of drool gliding down his chin.