You call me arrogant—
When all I did was raise a trembling hand
To guard the crumbling temple of my dignity.
You say I spoke as though I were a god,
Yet all I sought was to shield
What little sovereignty a man is allowed
Before the world strips him bare.
You say I swore we’d never meet again—
But know this: I was not severing,
I was preserving the sacred tether
That once bound us in grace.
Your son hurled stones in public square,
And your silence was louder than his rage.
Yet I bore him, fathered him,
Laid the marrow of my soul beneath his feet.
And still I was dragged,
By lips I fed and arms I shielded—
Bruised not by fists,
But by the silence of those I held dear.
For love, for charity’s ghost,
For the widow’s coin and the weary soul,
I laid myself low beneath the altar of sacrifice.
But what is this but abuse in disguise?
A cruelty cloaked in soft expectation?
And still, men are told:
“Speak not. Bleed inward.
Swallow thunder in silence.”
Till madness walks in wearing their name.
They say he drank,
Or lost himself to vices,
Yet it was grief that drank him first.
A thousand unshed tears drowned his truth,
Because the world never taught him how to weep.
He did not lack strength—
He had too much of it,
And it crushed him from within.
His soul, like parchment, thinned by centuries of restraint.
He died not of weakness,
But of honor too tightly bound.
And when he was gone,
They rewrote him:
Silent, sullen, suspect.
They priced his absence in the currency of guilt.
Yet he owed nothing—he gave everything.
He was no villain.
His crime was the depth of his devotion,
The ache of carrying what was not his to bear.
He shielded your storm as though it were his sky,
Held the memory of the first kiss
As sacred as scripture.
He remembered what you forgot—
The beginning.
And now he stands trial
In the court of your amnesia.
Tell me, fathers of old—
With laurels upon your brow,
How did you endure?
For today he is judged
By the very love he gave.
And from the shadow of himself,
He rises still…
That is Father.
That is Daddy.
And to him, on this day of grace,
We whisper:
Happy Father’s Day.
