To The Man Who Loves His Job More Than Anything Else. Poem by Takunda S Chikomo

To the man who loves his job more than anything else.

She sat there
Waiting for him to come back home
The clock now struck two am
It was already the next day.
She could not do it anymore
So she gathered up the little

Energy she had left
She scribbled in the least legible handwriting
She could manage
It was a letter to her father
Her father the pastor.

In the letter she wrote
Dear father
I know you are a very busy man
I waited for you to come back home
But now its two am and
I have class tomorrow

I wanted you to help me
With my assignment on leadership
I wanted to know whether its true that
People with high leadership positions
Have limited time with their families
I also wanted to know whether its true

That the children of church leaders
Are the wildest of them all
I also wanted to know why this is so.
It turns out your absence was exactly
The answer i needed.
Just recently i looked for you

I wanted to know whether
The meaning of the word father had changed
Whether it now refers to the man
Who stands in front of you
And preaches every Sunday morning

And vanishes for the rest of the week
Only to reappear the following sunday.
I wanted to know whether
I was your only child your only daughter
Or there were many others out there.
I wanted to know whether i was born to

live
With a father figure
And not an actual father
For as long as i can remember you have been
More of a spiritual father

And less of a father to me
Of which i entirely understand.
As i write this letter
I want to let you know
With a burdened heart
That i am pregnant

I have been pregnant twice before
But i kept on having miscarriages
This time around this baby seems to want to come out
Not even mother knows about this
Because just look at it

How can the preacher's kid
Be so foolish enough to
Sleep around?
But isn't that exactly what's happening
Are there not the children of church leaders out there who are falling from

grace
Each and everyday?
Anyways i am not actually pregnant
As you may presume
I am just about to give birth to a baby
A baby whose name shall be melancholy

Whose surname shall be Neglected
Whose father is loneliness
Whose conception was inspired by fatherlessness
Maybe this baby shall be
The father i never had...

Father, i as your daughter
I respect your work
I respect your time away
I honor your service to the lives of others
I also honor your leadership as a servant.
Every night when i pray to God

I ask him to please send me back
My father
I miss those days when you would read to me
Bed time stories from the bible
How you would dramatise any bible story

And how you would scare me to sleep with
The stories from the book of revelation whenever i got naughty
I remember how you taught me the Lord's prayer

I remember it well when you used to come to my school on prize giving day
I would show off to my friends that my dad
My hero is a pastor
But somewhere somehow

Work got in the way of all the time we had together
So now the only prayer i send to God
Is asking for my father back.
They say that the flock should intercede
For the Shepherd's offspring

Sadly they are not, so my prayers are mine alone
Instead they laugh at me
They say the pastor's daughter
Is a spoiled brat
They also say i have all that i can ever

ask for
Sadly they do not know that my father
Their pastor,
is hardly at home
Is hardly there when i need him
I have grown to admire other children's

fathers
And not mine.
Daddy please come back home
The memories of what we did back in the day haunt me
Day and night

I really miss my father
My father
The pastor.

TAKUNDA S CHIKOMO.