No: Stranger Father Poem by Hillfigure Sackey

To grief you was to admit to the loss I felt over your absence.
To forget ever having you seemed painless; to forget father, seemed easier when to remember caused a burdensome emotional state.
Looking into the glass and telling the face reflected back I’m not affected worked when my eyes looked not through the windows of jealousy upon other girls and theirs. I’m not affected worked well with me until the day you walked back into my life.There you stood, stranger father with eyes very much like my own, own flesh, own kin. I walked those steps knowing a day of great change has reached my doors

You smiled with lips which’s contours reflected mine yet the smile those lips formed did not replicate my own.
You ask why and I say I’m fine; what I wished to say was I have received a gift from above a gift I didn’t know I had wished for; but life told me nothing in this world is free. I meant to ask you are you sad life thought me these things and not you?
But instead I grip unto your suit burring my face in your scent a scent so familiar to my nose yet too alien

You wash my face with kisses, holding me to you I strive to hold back tears; as I count the clock that counts ages I find thirteen tears shed, thirteen birthdays and thirteen conversations with life.
The stranger, a stranger my nose knows a stranger my heart knows the stranger who is my thirteen years stranger father.

Apprehension stemmed from this feeling sowed before you left me at two, now grown with roots; to believe you would stay this time round would make me a green girl so distance proved a great defence.

T’was not anger daddy but fear of losing you again.