MY FATHER'S SILENT SECRET

My father seldom spoke of fifty-six;

The story lived where words refused to stay.

I saw it in the way his gaze would fix

On distances no map could chart away.
Before tanks, he was a young man standing tall,

With friends and dreams that filled the autumn air;

Then came the guns, the smoke, the sudden fall

Of all they thought a future might yet bear.
He watched his city bleed through ash and flame,

And learned how swiftly hope and sorrow meet;

Some friends became but echoes of a name,

Left unremembered on a broken street.
He fled, so one day I might call him Dad;

My freedom rests upon what he never had.