Burdens of the Absent

I have missed out on knowing who is my real father ,

He was a drunkard, a drug addict and a womanizer

These are labels thrown at me when I ask about him

I do not ask what attracted her to him in the first place,

What were her hopes in tying herself

To someone who belonged to everyone,

I also do not ask why he never bothered coming for me

Why he did not miss out on fathering me,

One should not interrogate a grave and kick rocks

When all he receives is silence,

But I am told the dead can communicate sometimes

He still does not think that I am worthy of being spoken to,

Those spoken to treats a man who neglected me as a god

I have learnt that death elevates one to a worthy status,

Despite having scattered your life and those around you

It protects you from being confronted with all your wrong doings,

She is over there writing a memorial letter

A love letter of how they met and fell in love instead,

Blowing up an opportunity to teach men at the funeral

To not die like him,

To not come home in a coffin to be buried by those you ran away from

To not be bathed at the morgue by women,

Who do not know your love

But all this does not matter when you are no longer a person,

Your death is a burden to us

We are burdened by tears that refuses to come out,

When we lower your coffin to the ground

I am looked at with suspicion when I detail how you died alone,

Without shedding a tear

The problem again is the one who has been neglected,

The problem is who are we to decide where he should be buried

When he has children who could also claim him,

Children he has also abandoned in different cities

The problem is a papgeld he will demand from the grave,

Papgeld he ran away from when he was alive

For being alive means to take care of the dead and the living,

Unless you run, ofcourse

You stop running when you get stabbed in the back

And be wheelchair bound,

A thought I should have acted upon

For him to sit down and listen to me,

You also stop when you are chronically sick and hospitalized

We are called to gather and hear your last words,

You are lucky when the phone is on voicemail

When the doctors attempt to reach you,

For it is torture to be told you are loved out of guilt

And fear,

Fear of what awaits them from the other side

If they do not mend their ways,

Those who stand in the way being us with heavy hearts

And unanswered questions which we no longer seek answers to,

"Step aside, you blocking the sun's view for me"

Words he would say if he could be given an opportunity to do so,

In the grave

Every time I visit him to spade veld which gives him shade,

Veld he confuses for his offsprings from different mothers

Women he has met and bent their backs in this cemetery.