The Last Days of Freedom.
Reckonings on the Edge of Fatherhood
The Last Days of Freedom.
These quiet, darkened days,
dampened by the cries of argumentative seagulls,
echoing the sounds of a town
I once called home.
The noises trail into the night,
the stars shiver with their distance.
These solitary, inner moments—
my last days of freedom.
We sit with contented patience,
awaiting tiny fingers
linked to tiny palms.
We sit with contorted bodies
one blossoming, the other decaying.
And people will ask:
“What did you do with those last days of freedom?”
I drift into dreamy pastures,
telling them,
“I was wild…”
and reiterate my past victories:
“I was wild, man! I bloomed,
like those wildflowers in the park.”
I’ll recall indiscreet discretions,
the deafened woman smashing rocks through windows,
a succession of married women
who came before.
But the truth of my last days of freedom
is less poetic.
These cloud-covered evenings,
undulating with soft, marshmallow forms,
envelop my dull and senseless synapses.
They used to shine,
but now refuse to connect
these cloud-covered evenings
drift endlessly by.
I’ve spent these last days of freedom
resigning from the binds that tie,
taking risks once again.
I’ve spent these last days of freedom
worried I have no idea how to hold that tiny hand.
I’ve noticed I haven’t got a face anymore
it’s fallen completely away.
I press my coarse hand
against five-day-old bristles
and ponder the great questions of my newfound life:
Would Hemingway master algorithms?
Would Bukowski like my website?
I sit back and watch my cat catch moths.
He hasn’t been happy of late.
Every tiny movement startles him.
Maybe he realizes it’s his last days of freedom, too.
I watch him snare a moth,
chew it, then spit it out,
realizing it wasn’t what he ordered.
I sympathize wholeheartedly.
This quiet, darkened thought
drifts into one of my last days of freedom
Notes & Reflections.
The Last Days of Freedom was written in the fragile space just before the birth of our first child, our daughter—a time charged with anticipation, fear, and the quiet grief of letting go.
The title plays with a subtle pun on The Last Days of Sodom, hinting at both the apocalyptic finality of an era and the messy, imperfect humanity that thrives within it.
While the comparison isn’t literal, it captures the emotional landscape: a world about to be irrevocably transformed, not by divine wrath, but by something equally profound—the arrival of new life.
In those days, I found myself reckoning with the duality of transformation. Becoming a parent felt like standing at the edge of something vast, where every part of me would be redefined, not through loss alone, but through an exchange—freedom traded for responsibility, recklessness for tenderness, self-centeredness for devotion.
The poem wrestles with that paradox, romanticizing past “wildness” while quietly admitting its hollowness. It’s about realizing that the most significant shifts in life don’t arrive with grand gestures but in the quiet, darkened days, the soft, cloud-covered evenings, and the small, startling truths that catch you off guard—like watching a cat chase a moth, realizing it’s not what he wanted, and feeling the sting of recognition.
Beautiful
The title is fitting, very nice work.