Lost
I woke up at four in the morning, missing my Daddy.
He’s been gone for six years now; I shouldn’t do that anymore.
But in the dark of the night I cringed at memories of what I’d done with his name,
And wanted to scream to him, call to him.
Silently I called out for the smell of old books, Old Spice, Ambrosia tobacco,
Fighting back anguished cries in a silent house filled with two sleeping children,
A house where no sane person would shatter the calm veneer by screaming.
Because I could not scream, I fled my thoughts instead,
And clutched a stone against my heart for comfort, and longed for something warmer,
The silent screams died away, in the dark, scattered by the careless brush of an ethereal touch.
My memories, though, and my cringing, did not fade entirely,
And now it is almost six-thirty, and I sit in a lit room at a keyboard,
Where my fingers can call out when my voice must not.
My Daddy . . . my Daddy . . . why can’t you answer my cries?
I lost it, lost the potential and dreams you gave me, never lived up to your eyes.
My dolls are gone, lost in a black trunk I didn’t recognize when I might have saved them,
Lost to a house taken by a man you told me not to marry.
The little things you liked enough to purchase, small antiques that had no meaning for me then,
I lost long ago, sold to the highest bidder, gone, gone to people who never knew you.
Two of them taken by a nasty greasy man at a flea market,
When a rainy day left me without even enough to pay for my stall.
I hate it that that man has your things.
I hate it that I can’t even remember what little pieces of you he took from me.
I hate it that I ever let go of a single item you ever touched,
A single thing that ever caught your eye.
It wasn’t me now that once went through your home,
That picked and chose what to keep, and what to sell, and what merely to leave.
The person that did that was a silly girl six years younger than me,
With a different life, and different needs,
Struggling to survive in barbed-wire boundaries.
But her choices bind me now, and cannot be remade,
And the things she chose to leave behind are lost forever.
Lost, as are you, my Daddy, to me.
Why?
There is the question that can never be answered,
Because there is no “Why.” At least the hot tears that flow now across my cheeks are saner than screams,
And I will go back to bed, and clutch my stone,
And hide in the strong embrace of memory-wraith arms.
Return to the Library.
Return to the Front Door.
E-mail me at Weavre_@hotmail.com.