She Never Knew Her Father, But She Loved Her Dad

She never knew her father.
Summer afternoons,
beneath the apple tree
on the farm
where she lived
with her mother
and her step father, whose sailor
tattoos, taut white t-shirts and Old Spice
smell she loved almost as much
as him,
she nevertheless
day dreamed.

He was of Russian heritage
she’d heard
from her aunt
who would talk
when her mother
would not.

She imagined her life
had he not ran
away, created
Omar Sharif in a sable
coat, braving the tundra
to save endangered
belugas, a loud
Russian family, vodka
cheeked around
a wooden table, eating
borscht or piroshky.
She hummed a tune
which would be more beautiful
played on a belailaika.

Until supper time,
announced by her mother
standing in a shirt dress on the porch
voice carried by the same breeze
which pushed a curl
over her eye.
Her mother,
a different woman now
than the one
who had fallen
in love
once
with her real father
wherever he was.