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(a follow-up)

Those days, I could still recall clearly
When, I did not feel warm hands
That would catch me if I ever fell
When I took my first steps as a baby...
When I had no one to take me to school on my first day
Had to cope with fear through my own childly ways,
I did many other firsts in my life,
On my own,
Without the warmth and caring presence of
My father....

Somehow, a notion came about...
And I reflected long on it...
This is an Epiphany in my late summer years...
Those days I was without him physically,
Were the moments I strongly felt his presence...
He would be---
In front of me
Beside me
Behind me,
All those times, taking care of me
The only way he could:
By invisibly watching over me...
While my mother was at work,
While I was playing,
While in school,
While growing up as a teenager...
When my safety was jeopardized,
He was very much with me...
In my dreams, he would comfort me...
Talk to me, assuage my fears...
Even wanted to take me with him,
To save me...
And yet, he didn't....
He was selfless in his most unseen
But felt ways...

During the darkest, scariest,
Loneliest, and most difficult moments,
I just had to imagine his face,
Then things would turn out okay
For I felt his presence then...

Today, as I reflect on how I got to this age,
How I lived my life without him,
I have realized, those long-running hours,
Were not lost days at all...

I now have found my days with my father,
For, he is  my guardian angel,
He had been, he was, he is,
He will constantly be with me...
All my days,
Here on earth and beyond...

All my days...



Sally

Copyright 2014
Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
***Thank you, John Stevens! From your comments, this poem was born.***
Life

That's a poem, right?
there are no 'rights' in life

there's just things that should be done

and shouldn't be done.
"Always find a reason to enjoy life, and make the most of time."

*~Marian~
so i get this idea sometimes
that you enjoy being coy
when it comes to me
to conjure momentary spectacle
& make me wonder
if you paint catharsis
on the doors of a home
you've never lived in
as a memory of our first night together
because i do, i remember you
beaming white on blue
speaking softer than any storm
i ever knew, i often think that maybe
you live that night in your mind
when your pillow is cold
& you can't sleep, it makes me wonder
if you do as i do, and rewrite three years fictionally beginning with a kiss somewhere
maybe a balcony or a quiet car
on the sand or in a sunlit grove close to your home but always a familiar scar on the maps we know we know by heart
i wonder if sometimes
the idea of me loving you is too real
and if it teems under your tongue
to stay observant but distantly intrigued
if by this distance you think it safe
to get a dog and pass time
on the couch with a journal & some wine
what i really wanna know is if your fingernails ever wish to have my skin under them
or if they would boast
about winning a war with my headboard
i wonder if you can imagine me
meeting your parents in your apartment & shaking your fathers hand
as a first of many calloused palm readings
and if you know that i trembled before them
how insignificant i had felt
to not know their daughter
in the way i had envisioned
how i picture such poignant moments
so tangibly sharp that sometimes
i replace  my memories with little stories
i tell myself that i can't count on two hands
the number of times i've seen you
& that i don't feel like a crater
when i recollect our collisions
i want to know if you still find madness
in the words that have always been about you
i wanna know if your imagination of me
looks more like an anniversary or an obituary
you see
i had always felt
that in a dream
i was the absence
of the dream
and then it dawned on me
that i was in a time piece
trapped during forgotten hours
where everything is alien
but vaguely familiar
the beach beneath me wandering
off to anywhere but here
and i straddle the shoreline
palming stray shards of sea glass
always the color of her eyes
and i am abruptly upside down
an upheaval, a maw
where i thought it as
a nightly revenge
for skipping stones
and again i am upended
& back on the beach
born of broken hourglasses
and it makes me think
that god likes to watch things leave me
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