Daughters Despondency

• Anthony Farah
• Poetry
• 2010

Father’s farewell, leaves a daughter with an empty promise
A promise to make it home each day and send letters, when he is so far away
But in this promise lies a despair, that’s too hard to bear
because he knows not of what will happen on the battlefield.

As he sets off on the road to disaster, and to his death
his daughter the oldest of 8 children, says her final goodbye
in a final heartfelt wave of her delicate little hands, that spitting image is stuck in his mind.
and to the battlefield, that has now become a bloodshed barren field.

Everyday she waited for him, and he came home with red as wine dried up blood and dust as grey as smog from the debris.
Whenever he was so far away, he wrote letters and these letters possessed the tears he sheds for his family
And every other time, he called his daughter and wife, and then his daughter would go to bed with a sense of relief as phenomenal as a homeless person, being given a home that he wouldn’t have any mortgage that needed to paid.

As the days passed, he rarely came home and sent letters, the daughter and mother started to worry as a mother would worry that her child has been kidnapped when they give no communication.
Then the phone rang and it possessed a shrill that a woman screaming for help when a monster is chasing her would possess.
Her mother answered in a sincere tone as she would if she were paying her condolences at a funeral.
Then she passes it to her daughter like a relative giving their nephew/niece a gift to remember them by.

Daughter takes it and finds her father on the other line; she is relieved like the mother has found her child hasn’t been kidnapped and was just delayed in coming home.
When she is nearing the end of his call, she hears a deafening bang, and the phone goes dead cold like a person having all their life and blood sucked out of them.
Daughter collapses to the floor leaving the phone hanging.

Today Sunday 12th of September, is the 35th anniversary of his death,
2nd September, 35 yrs ago, Father’s farewell, leaves a daughter with an empty promise
A promise to fight for his country, and die whilst doing it.