AD INFINITUM

for those raised without fathers

Did he die in a war?

Caught between comrade and country (sometimes,

These things are not the same)

In the trenches

The bundus

The barren ground that war leaves behind—

Velds set afire, women screaming in the distance.

Is this where he died?

Is this where they buried him?

Is he a mystery?

A man made of sometimes and maybes

Carved out of everything he could never give you;

A statue, a monument

To all his failings as a father.

My mother built him this way;

Placed him in the centre of the living room,

A king of couches and a television screen,

But would never dare look him in his empty wooden eyes.

Is this when he left?

When you were old enough to know he was there,

But too young to remember the curves of his face?

Does he call?

For your birthday, for Christmas,

For anything—to hear the sound of your voice,

Feel you grow over the phone

Feel as though this, your words sent across borders and oceans—

Years, if we're too late—

This, is enough.

Some men don't have voices—only vices,

A snake wrapped around their wrist

Waiting for our us to succumb to sleep, to the unconscious,

Before he and his mysteries slithered into the night.

Did he leave anything behind?

A shoe. His handwriting on a Valentine's Day card dated 1983.

A mother of two. A girl with glasses. A boy with all the sadness in the world.

Men like that do not come back.

Forever, they will be a mystery.

Some men must remain unsolved.

*

i don't talk about my father much, mostly because there isn't much to talk about. he was never here, and i always thought i couldn't be affected by his absence if i'd never felt his presence. but, as i've recently figured out, my father is a ghost haunting the house i call my body, and to free myself, i must write about him until all of this pain is nothing but paper.

thank you for reading! 

also: the word bundus (pronounced boon-dos, like do) is a South African word for the rural areas, where there's nothing but grass and mass graves. sadness.

i love you x

  — jay.