Missing My Father Poem by Ragy Sandid

I can't remember when I
First recognized him
Was a he a giant or a monster?
But he was someone who had a say
In my life

He was someone I feared
Of doing something wrong all the time
He was also someone I went to
Whenever I had trouble. A paradox.

All I knew was that he existed
To what purpose, I really don't know.
I didn't recognize those moments
When he desperately tried to save me.
Mainly from myself.

Later I knew, I was at the back of his mind
I lived there constantly. My mother was pregnant with me.
I was the embryo that never disembarked his brain.
I really thought he didn't care.

We never saw eye to eye on things
Moral versus matter was what we were at
And I told him if things die, values live on
And he told me values wear differently on different people.

We were ever at odds, but he still sought
My affection. It was then I saw him as a monster.
Out to get me. Out to control my life.
Somehow, I had to get away but never could.
Till one day everything, moral or matter, was decided.

Everyone's news is just news till it's yours.
When it's yours, you feel yourself in vertigo and vortex
People seem like wasted ghosts trying to enter into your life.
You want to welcome them all at once yet you feel you reject them.
When my father died, pillars seem to fall with him. His phone was broken soon after.
His life achievements crumbled. To the extent that I wondered how far of an impact
Did this man have on people's lives? Now, I continue trying to raise
My children right. Some of what I delivered is being handed back to me.

Every now and then I think how far have I wronged him.
Have I been wrong about him?
Was he the great man everyone made him to be?
Or was he the Genghis Khan of the piece others made him to be?
One thing is for sure. I miss him. That's just me.