voluntary departure

A Poem by mila

More of a prose poem.

I know it must’ve struck something inside of him as I held his hands almost in tears and I could’ve sworn I saw that look of pain in his eyes and regret in his decisions. I squeezed his hand as hard as I could so that maybe he could have gotten an idea of how much it was hurting me but he was always so stubborn that I doubt that even now he has an idea of how much pain he’s put me through. “Things have changed. It’s not the same country you left many years ago.” The pressure on my chest had never felt so breathtaking and my neck had never felt so restrained before. As he sat across from me, the slight constrained weeping of my mother triggered a nerve because before I could even control myself, my bottom lip jutted out and my eyebrows began to scrunch up and out came the tears. “I don’t want you to be disappointed when you get there.” He isn’t supposed to do this, he’s supposed to stay with me, see me venture out, graduate, cry over heartbreak or stupid meaningless things, watch me make careless decisions and yell at me for them. I didn’t say these things because I didn’t think I had to say them, shouldn’t he already know? Doesn’t he think about these things too? “Don’t worry,” he smiled. “I won’t be disappointed.” He was supposed to live all those moments that dads are supposed to live with their daughters but now he’s miles away regretting the moment he stepped onto that plane.