I received a strange call from a stranger,
"Hello"I responded...
" H-e-l-o", he voiced out,
He sounded like a ghost in the night,
His voice bold and scary..
I wanted to throw the phone and run,
but my gut assured me "its okay".

The man on the other line is man i never meet before,
but he is claiming to be my father.
The man on the other string is the same invisible father who ghosted me my whole life,
Haunting me with curiosity.

I thought he was a soldier and his absenteeism was because he died in a war..
A thought I knew it was never true..
But now the man is calling with a south African number.
Telling me tales that trigger my tears...
My long lost daddy is now acting like an artist,
Holding painting brushes and coated with colorful paints
Daddy is painting a perfect lie in every stroke of his brush,
Claiming to knows me now that I'm grown up,
Daddy is telling a good lie,
Blaming my mother for keeping me away from him...

The nurve of him is so immoral...
Does he know the hell i endured at his absence?
Does he know the path I chose,?
The pain I went through?
When life was a storm and I couldn't find a breakthrough?
Does he know how many times I hid in the dark, shedding tears of blood?

All along he was never there!
But now he wants to clean up my life with a broom and a mop so I don't tell the mud.
How many times did life kick me down and stole my light?
Raped me of my innocence and leaving me alone in the darkest night.?
Where was he, when I walked through a land of death?
In a city where I knew no one,
when my school life was a total wreck..
Did my mother keep me away even when i was old enough to make my own decisions?
Didn't you know where you left me?
Didn't you knew my numbers then?
tell me who was I to you all along,
Can you remember?

@speakingpoetry
© Chavani Ripfumelo Constacia