This collection of poetry addresses how someone deals with the absence of a father. In Daddy is Missing we hear the ideas of things going missing and people looking for them. What is that like? To be the face on a milk carton or the person a flyer? But for this person they are looking for their father. He was a presence for a while and them, he was gone. How does someone move on from that moment or do they continue to search all of their lives? In Swinging Door, the last moment that a child sees their father is visualized in a difficult poem. Through their eye’s daddy leaves with a suitcase, but it is the physical response of the mother that makes the child understand the situation. Lastly, in When I Marry a very honest and at times humorous poem that deals with someone expressing all of the reasons that they are never getting married. But when the truth comes to light it is realized that their reality says if they never marry they will never have to divorce.
*This collection may be performed by any gender actor.
Broken Family Dynamics
Only children grace the back of milk cartons
Stained from the snow-white milk
Their faces memories of children who
Are loved and missed by someone somewhere
But they don’t do that anymore
Only children get Amber Alerts
Cities come to a standstill
Communities come together
Looking under every bridge
In the woods
Dogs out
Searching for a scent
The smell… the dogs hold on to the smell
Like the scent on the end of a dog’s nose
Like the memories on the cartons
Like a mother forever waking up to an empty bed
Like a father gone missing.
My father has gone missing.