Papa

Papa, I have always watched you from the sidelines.

I have watched you work yourself to the bone, tending to us and tending to the home that we built surrounded by the mountains, down at the countryside.

Papa, I have always loved you from afar.

I have watched you take the burdens of the world around us as if they were your own.

As a kid, I used to daydream about the days when I would grow older and bring the world down to your feet.

But now that I am older, the world has beaten down my edges. I have grown weary. And that small daydream seems a bit out of reach right now.

Papa, I have observed you from afar.

Loved your brittle edges, the way you shone like a burning candle lightning up our life like the night sky lit up with the stars.

I miss the home that we had built together, I miss the simpler times.

But most of all, papa, I just miss you.

Papa, for the rest of our days, I wish to have a lot of conversations with you.

About mindless little things that we never talked about. Like your favourite colour, for example or the kind of flowers that would make you smile.

Papa, you are my mountain. You are the trees and the flowers. The leaves and the sky. You are my foundation and my light.

Even though I am not the best I could be, I am who I am because of you. At the end of the day, I am your daughter, I come from you.

There aren’t enough words for me to tell you how much I love you.

So this would have to be enough because papa, I wrote this for you.