She is five.
Hiding.
Where won’t the boogy man from the nightmares find her?
But daddy swoops in on his big white stallion and scares all the monsters away.

She is eleven.
Frustrated.
Her head is pounding with the miscomputations of math,
But daddy swoops in on his big white stallion and makes the numbers work right.

She is sixteen.
Miserable.
Her heart in pieces on the floor and her head is flooded with memories of him,
But daddy swoops in on his big white stallion and puts the pieces together with ice cream and love.

She is eighteen.
Scared.
Her body longing for freedom and her heart longing for no change,
But her daddy swoops in on his big white stallion and sends her off into the world with tears in his eyes and love bursting the seams of his heart.

She is twenty-five.
Alone.
Her choices are her own,
And she must scare the boogy man away herself.
Daddy is gone.
The stallion is gone.
And the way he fixed everything with a gentle swoop
is gone.

Left behind
you look back.
One thing is not gone.
One thing you will not lack.
The lessons he taught,
about how to carry on.
Most importantly,
he taught you how to be strong