Letter from a son

(Written for the Letters and Postcards comp)

Dear Dad, I know you only left this morning
on a train bound for another country
I’ll probably never get to see.

I still don’t know why you had to go,
to fight for something
you don’t believe in.

Mum hasn’t stopped crying since you left.
I took Milly to the park, to give mum a break
but it didn’t help, Milly hasn’t stopped asking about you.

I tried to tell her “Dad has gone off
to defend our country - keep it safe”
but she’s too little to understand.

I wish I was too little to understand.

I know what you’d say If you were here.
You’d be saying…

“Son, you’re the man of the house now,
old enough to put away childish things,
the world doesn’t always work how we want it to”

I don’t want to be a man yet, dad.
I wish the world could be fair
but I’ll do my best to hold us together.

I’m secretly scared you won’t come back
don’t tell mum, she’d be mad that I don’t have faith.
And Milly, I think she’ll be okay.

Though I’ll run out of money soon
if I have to keep buying her ice-cream
every time she cries.

I love you, dad. And I know you love us too.
Your words are still loud in my head,
that we’re the reason you’ll come home.

© Indie Adams 2012