The Solitude of an Only Child

She is kind

And soft and pink

Like the Cinderella, she adores.

Though unlike her

Glass slippers,

She wears a heart of glass,

A transparent, shining

But brittle heart.



The sun spreads out

On the terrace

With slothful arrogance,

As trees

With barren branches

Watch across the window

in melancholy.



I suddenly wake up

From the siesta,

To find her riding

Her bicycle on the terrace,

In circles

On a journey which

Takes her nowhere.



She rides in circles

And talks in riddles,

To herself,

Sometimes pretending to be

A teacher, sometimes a student

Like the princess

In the fable of sleeping princess

Doomed to the sixteen years

Of lonely growing up

In a forlorn fortress,

Albeit without even

The company of three

Loving fairies.



With an confounding

Feeling of affection and gloom

I watch her

As I recollect

The broken glass pieces

Spread randomly

Across the innards

Of my being,

A heart broken

Across the years of my own

Merciless, solitary childhood,

Which I have long since

Pretended never to have happened

But which

Returns to me

With a sadistic, evil smile on its face

And beats on the doors,

With ugly, heavy and hairy arms

As the weak latches

Shakes in the fear

Of impending defeat.



Will I, her father,

be able to transform

My self into one of those

Many coloured fairies,

And be a company to my child

Filling up her days

With companionship

Never leaving an empty, silent moment

In her life

Until she is old enough

For a handsome prince

To gallop across

On a dashing white horse

With grand mane,

To climb up the fortress walls

And kiss her out of a lonely childhood

And walk with her

Into the horizon

Beyond the rainbows;

Where the sounds

Of laughter, of music

And dancing with abandon

Flows agains the banter of friends

And glasses and cutleries clink

With welcome?



This is the question

Which I need to answer today

For her sake and mine.