A poem to my (absent) father – Daddy, where are you?

Father, where are you?

Your absence is audible.

There is silence where your voice is supposed to be.

Your absence is tangible.

Only the cold wind around me where your arms are supposed to be.

Father, who are you?
I know only the empty chair from where you are meant to pray for the food we are about to eat.

Are there expectations that mommy and I didn’t meet?

I know only sadness in my heart where your love is supposed to be.

And directionlessness in my life where your guidance ought to be.

Dad, who am I?
I try to suppress feeling agro

Since I do not have a hero.

In your absence, who will show me the way?

With you not here, who will teach me to one day stay?

Where will I find security, if not with you?

In what will I find stability, if not in you?

Daddy.
18 summers are all that I ask of you.
I long for you to be more than a person who has fathered a child.
I long for you to long for me.
I long for you to teach me to be.
I long for you to see yourself in me.

Am I you?

Were you here long ago, where I am now?

Will I one day be there, where you are now?

Or will you be a man and chase away my fear

by stepping up and by being near?

Be near me and teach me to draw nearer to Him.

Be near me so that you’re always only an arm’s reach away

I can then place my tiny feet in your footprints which lead the way

Love me unconditionally, so that I may

Learn to also love all others, come what may.

Daddy, heal me
So that I can heal this land.

Father, please heal me.

and I will heal this land.