Abandoned Poem by Angela Bontle Ditumiso

Daddy never knew his way back home
He left for the mines
Found it convenient to disremember the reason why
Left so he makes a living
Make money to sustain
His family
That goal he never attained

Daddy walked away
Turned a new leaf
Settled in new abode
Found another wife
Forgot about his former life
The one where he was a married man
With three children

Money brainwashed
The man that I so loved
The man I looked up to
Suddenly I've grown tall
And his reputation is too short
A miniature, something I wish
Never to be

Daddy dug the ground
And buried his past in the process
He made much progress
Became a success
Grew never to regress
So like figures in a photograph
He perceived us works of art
Something he could think of
If not to stare and admire
And throw us in a box
A box were memories were locked up

From his mind we were erased
Disposed, effaced from a man's heart
Daddy never knew his way home
But his corpse just knocked at
Our door two decades later
He forgot where he belonged
But his cadaver remembered his place
Right by my mother's side