The Patriarch

As I slowly unfurl the creases of your endearing existence,
the tarnished ink tenderly seeps through my delicate fingers
and the ebony scribbles of desire from almost two decades ago
elegantly branch out with fervent bouquets of your undying love for her.

My searching eyes wander through your Victorian balladries,
a mere beholder of your ardent memoir, I allow my eager mind
to steal me from my life and to convey me to your memories
from an antagonistic time of benevolence and apprehension.

My curious soul fluidly voyages to the far side of time and space
and submits itself to an exceptionally familiar mortal one;
under the faint illumination of the lustrously ignited stars,
his rippled mane, a jet-black and his wrinkles, magically gone.

His earnest hazel eyes are deeply rooted in his far-reaching reveries,
then I notice his authoritarian intensity creep out of his eyes;
he stretches out and grabs a pen and a white pristine stationary
and he gracefully fashions his words in starry-eyed sentences.

I watch him from far-off, musing if the moon eyes him as I do,
his firm hands embrace the note as he slips it in an ivory envelope,
the same hands that aimed for crimson cardinals that flew,
the same hands that gently wiped the flowing tears from my face.

I catch myself as my soul sharply reenters my bone-tired body,
my vision starts to blur, my burning chest begins to quiver,
I yearn for your hands to appear and for you to enfold me lovingly
but all I am presented with are your affectionate love letters for mother.

I cautiously glance at the disoriented people around me,
their faces, smeared with grief, their voices, hoarse from their endless cries;
they glimpse at your rigid body to see the former home of your soul,
and suddenly, thousands of hearts break in the rhythm of the wailing sky.

They speak of your triumph and your teeming compassion,
they have lost a great man, an exceptional leader of their time;
I sullenly weep inside, behind my resilient expression;
then, I drearily realize that not I alone have lost a father.