05/05/2026
The Shape of a Father
Some of us knew him as a voice
low and steady in the next room,
a door that closed at night
so the world couldn’t get in.
Some of us knew him as absence—
a chair that never quite cooled,
a name spoken carefully,
as if it might break in the mouth.
Some of us learned him in fragments:
the way anger can echo,
the way silence can stretch
longer than any road home.
And still—
there is a shape we carry.
In the spine when we stand our ground,
in the hands when we build or break,
in the quiet question that follows us:
am I enough?
For some, he was shelter.
For others, a storm that never passed.
For many, both at once—
love braided tightly with fear.
But the story does not end there.
Because what was given
is not all that remains.
We inherit more than memory—
we inherit the chance to choose.
To soften where he hardened.
To speak where he swallowed words.
To stay where he could not.
To leave what should not be carried.
And slowly, in ways almost invisible,
we become something new:
Not the absence,
not the wound,
not the echo—
but the one who decides
what “father” will mean
from here.
