Listen and hear, “Riley, this is God speaking,”
Then chuckles on the phone’s other end.
The familiar, yet distant voice of a father
Reaching out to a daughter,
In a failed attempt at a new life.
Slowly fading from the telephone, from the world.

There will forever be a void in the world,
With no more eating or thinking or speaking
From the soul that led this lost life,
The soul that lived it to the fullest until the end,
That lived it until all that was left behind was a daughter,
A daughter without a father.

How does one break the news of a lost father?
“We did everything we could, everything in the world.”
Doctors sit and stare at the daughter
In a poorly lit room, no one speaking.
They let her know that this is the end,
There is no more struggle for life.

She has to move on with her own life,
With a mother and friends, but no father.
This will remain until her own end.
With a new, fresh fear of the world,
Always cautious and never speaking
Of the fact that she is an abandoned daughter.

Nonetheless, she remains a daughter
To a man who, much too young, lost his life.
She can still feel him living, hear him speaking
The wise words that come only from a father.
And although everything has changed in her world,
It is far from her life’s end.

It is nowhere in sight, her end.
She is strong for such a lonely daughter
Who has been pushed quickly into the world
By experiencing the darker sides of life.
She will hold fast to the memory of her father.
She still feels him near, still hears him speaking.

What is it like at the end, with no more life?
A daughter’s questions unanswered by her father;
Listen and hear him everywhere in the world, softly speaking.