" I gave you a name before we even set eyes on each other. I tended to your every need, not from the goodness of my heart but because you are my heart. I watched you crawl until you learned to walk, I discerned your cries until you began to talk. it was then you called me by my name, my truest name, unspoken by anyone else in the world-"Daddy", for I was only yours. Still I am, though you do not know me anymore. By the time you had learned to walk, our Little world had fallen prey to war. There was never meant to be any victory, only victims in equal share. A balancing of hurts not meant for you, but, love, war is hell. It took two of us to create you and only one to destroy both you and I. You had only just begun to walk. Your hands still small enough to close entirely in mine. I gave you a name before you set eyes upon the world and, now, we sit as strangers on opposing sides of an angry line. For your first few years, each night, I read to you a lovely story as I laid you down to sleep. You've been gone from me for so long now, I pray that's still in your memory. Just as soon as you learned to walk, your hands still small enough to close entirely in mine, your hand was taken into angry hands and your little feet were marched hurriedly away. You've grown into someone whom I do not know, save that you are still my heart. Your bedtime stories changed to tales of imagined beasts you had to leave behind. Time and absence made those tales into truth for you. War is hell, my love, and fate does not disclose her plans. There was never meant to be any victory, only victims in equal share. The hurt for the one who has waged this war has long since been avenged. Their grief, that blossomed into anger, grew only in a garden of discord and choked out all the beauty this life had to give. Nothing is owed to them anymore. They are dead and they have given only death, which I have wanted more for myself with each passing year of time and absence. You are still my heart and my only proof of life. I know there is hurt in you, yet, still unavenged. Despite the lies in the tales you've been told at the end of every day away from me, I would sacrifice myself to make it all go away and heal you, my heart. I would die to give you life. Martyr myself for you to smile and feel love inside. I pray who I am still exists as a ghost inside your memory. I never showed you anything but, my purest love. I could never give you any less, my heart"
© Michael Paul Reed