Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Arlen Mar 2
Old man, you left me there
Floating, drowning in the sea
So now that I've finally made it back to land
Don't pretend you still know me
LoveIsReal Feb 25
A small little outstretched hand, cradles the big finger, clutching on. The mother looks at her child and smiles brightly, how this bundle of joy came from her she would never understand but the love she had for her child was so abundant and clear.
Softly humming a lullaby and rocking back and forward, a man walks in with a brightly smiled face and adoring eyes.

He whispers to the mother “Now this, this is us starting our own little family.”

The mother looks up and plants a quick kiss on the man's lips, she looks back at her child and says “It's gonna be one adventure after another, with our bundle of joy.”

The man embraces both mother and child and they all fall asleep one after another.
Oh, father.
That little girl,
You met in September.

You left.

Remember?

Without a trace,
Nor a track.
Left mother nothing but a heart attack.

But, father,
Dare I ask?

Is there a chance
You will ever come back?
Six children and a suburban home
Don't it hurt you to see me like this?
One of yours, and still so alone?

First daughter assigned third wife
I've done it all wrong again,
Haven't I?

Sprawled all across this spiky green turf
Drinking up the merciless sunshine
Trying to keep it down

Weeping about my friend's father
Watching for a hint of remorse in your stern frown
I wait for you to ask for my forgiveness
Go on, ask
Let me for once be the one to deny
AE Feb 16
To my father, who loves telling stories

Pomegranate seeds,
splatter over the countertops
your laughter heightens their fragrance
a dish rag in my hands
a halfway story exaggerating between your lips
mouthfuls and mouthfuls of past
something so simple about this morning
a togetherness of complex mirage
sun pierces through this sinking heart
and a strong desire to ease the pain
that has sunken into the cracks
overcomes me
I wonder what love is,
If it exists beyond this moment as anything true
and you, still lost in your narrations
tell me all about living
and this wondering finds ease
just as I, in your presence
My fathers love ended up in a box, in a large cold room.
Strange you might think,
That the confectionaries in this dissapointing wooden container
Would be a relic of love to a small boy.
But there it was...
In that large cold room, in that large cold house,
In that large cold school,
Was this box.
And in this box was all sorts of sweets, crisps and so on
And that was what I had of my father.
The box was mysteriously called a "tuck box".
There were other boxes like it, lining the outside of this large room.
But this one was mine.

Each box had a small lock, some had stickers.
Mine had a sticker, neatly aligned in the rear left corner.
The room rarely had any visitors and aside from the boxes, it had a solitary ping-pong table.
There were no batts or *****, just a green table with a net sitting awkwardly in the centre of the echoey room.
If it could speak it would say "What the **** am I doing here"
and I think thats how we all felt... all us boys.
I had no wish to play table tennis.

I did wish for my fathers love though.
Before term he would take me to the shops.
I would be able to buy whatever sweets I liked, but I felt bad, like it must be costing him a lot of money... all those sweets that is...
Not the boarding school or plane journey away from home.

So armed with these sweets packed away in my bag,
I would get on a plane and go to that cold place,
Where this box of treats would remind me that my father wasn't there.
I would rarely share or trade my sweets with other boys.
It felt somehow disloyal to my father.
Like i was trading away his love for some small favour.
But really these trophies were too precious for me to give away.

So years later, I think my fathers love may somehow still be in that box.
In that cold lonely room.
The box is now in my parents attic, full of photos and other memories.
The tie my 'friends' signed on the day I left that school, almost 9 years later.
But I wonder how to reclaim the love locked in that box.
Or reclaim the heart of the lonely, sad boy who only had those sweets to reassure him.
That his father still loved him... wanted him... that even though he was a plane ride away from home...
He still had a home...
Which was...
Where did he live?
Where was his home?
Because it felt like he lived in that cold school,
Filled with the shouts of angry men and wild boys...
While his home was somewhere he no longer lived...
It was somewhere he went to for "holidays"!
In that far away country
Which was safe, and warm but somehow
No longer... home.


And all these years later the gap between me and my father remains
Questions hang in the air like icicles
Ready to fall...
Where were you,
For all those years?
Why didn't you come and get me?
How did you think i would survive without your presence as I grew up, without your love, your advice, your guidance
The safety of being at home...

Let me tell you I managed
I packed my pain away in that box.
And I survived.
I endured the passing of the years,
the bullying, fear, neglect, shame and embarrassment
I didn't so much find a way through. I found a way out.
to a place the world couldn't hurt me.
A place within where i can say **** the world. **** this place and
******* all.
And in that place i felt relatively safe
It was tolerably intolerably

But now as a man.
As i approach my fiftieth year
I can count the cost of this 'safety'
A cost in joy, a cost in love, a cost in family, a cost in life!
Because the part of me hidden in that box isn't living.
It's existing.
And life has needed more from me than I've had to give.
I have needed the colours locked away safely in that box.
I've needed the range of emotion only they could afford
I've needed the courage in there
The joy, the willingness to meet life
And I've not had these things to hand.
They have been locked away... safe
But unused.
As the years toiled on
And life has ebbed away.
I have survived
But not really lived

So here i am at this threshhold of my life
No longer satisfied with the half life of limited pallette.

and I choose life
Choose Colour
Choose expression
Choose Presence
Choose love
Choose pain
Choose tears
Choose loss
l Choose heartbreak.
And i want to let this messy path carry me forward
To a place I do not recognise
And to a life where I can find an experience which
Feel warm enough, safe enough, fun enough, alive enough, where I feel loved enough, where I love enough to dare to dance enough with life to dare to belong enough to call that place
home.

And let me tell you brothers and sisters I wish you to meet me there With your colour, with your joy, your heartbreak, your life and the wisdom trawled from the depths of your despair .
(let us share what we're learned  in a place
where we can join hands and find union in each others souls.
find home in each other
find belonging in each others arms , in each others hearts.
lets rise together, lets heal together, lets **** together and lets love together, walk together, cry together, dance together, marry together , win lose and, die together
we can walk together towards the dawn of our next life  as we part this one full
full of Love of lifes experience, with laughter lines etched across our faces as we tell the stories of our ancestors to our children children.
lets us dance live love and die in glorious presence together with life.
let us be , let us learn , let us live lets live lets draw on the ******* walls and wear our pants on our heads. Let's call ******* on ******* just live our glourds bueauitful lives together in messy harmony.
lets belong together lets home together
lets world together lets joy together
lets  sit together in a puddle of our own tears
and call that place home
where we love our life enough to be broken by its despair
as our blood and tears mix together and we become the earth beneath us.
become the air around us
the fire in our hearts
the love in our bones.
Alien Jan 11
The love of my father was boxing
seeing my father slicing
The wind with his bare hands
Shadow boxing by his lonesome
Like if he was fighting the wind
The wind was his sparring partner
the sounds of his fists cutting through the air
I saw the violence and art
my dear father moves slower
After many decades
his punches have lost its sound
and his movement
has lost rhythm of time
the wind has beaten him over the years
it has taken my father all he’s had to fight
His last fight  
Even the wind has taken the last wind out of him
jia Jan 9
i have skimmed every encyclopedia,
have gone through to limits of every book in biology,
and even went on to read depths of psychology,
but i have yet to find an answer
as to why a father could hurt his own daughter
Myrrdin Jan 2
I watch you tend to the celery
Weeding gently, encouraging
Little leaves tenderly
"You're growing" I hear you say
This moment is enough
To justify the love I possess for you
If you can tend to the seeds
Dirtier than I could ever be
One day you may even love me
Again, like you did
When I was as new as your garden
If you had tended to me so gently
Would I be here?
Or did you need me wilted
Desperate enough
That I might stay forever
Beneath the dirt
With you
Zywa Dec 2023
What does my father

smell like inside, how much worse --


than his stinking breath?
"Grote acht" ("Big Eight" - route of two circles in dressage, 2005, Vrouwkje Tuinman), chapter Eleven (years old) #2

Collection "Within the walls"
Next page