By Akanksha Patil
If I could mourn you,
I would weep as daughters do—
bending beneath sorrow’s weight,
sinking into the soft ruins of memory.
But no elegy shelters you; no sanctuary, no shrine.
Only silence reigns, vast and unyielding,
an endless ache where a father should stand.
Now I see you here, not as a person, but a mass,
a body absent of the warmth it was meant to give.
And I realize you were always this silent with me,
a statue, distant and unfeeling, heavy with words unspoken,
holding everything but the ones I longed to hear.
They say grief comes dressed in waves,
a tide meant to lift and carry us home.
But all I feel is the barren shore—
empty, unforgiving, washed clean
of any trace of love, of tenderness,
of the warmth I never knew.
If only you had been worthy of tears,
they’d spill like rivers, winding back
to moments I could carry close—
mornings drenched in light, hands that held gently,
words soft as summer rain, promises kept.
But you left me nothing but shadows of neglect,
a stranger to tenderness, a figure I learned to fear.
You gave me life yet remained a stranger,
rooted in soil too shallow to nurture.
I am both daughter and orphan,
reaching for an embrace that never held me,
a father who was there in form, but empty in soul.
And here, now, I bury the dream of you,
a father I crafted from hollow memories,
an embrace I carved from longing.
I mourn the ghost of who you might have been,
the father I fashioned in my solitude—
a sanctuary I built from wishes, unbroken and kind.
I don’t grieve your passing; I grieve the life
I might have led if only you’d taught me
the language of love, the simple grace of being seen.
You, who could give me life but not a home,
left me clinging to echoes, yearning for the light
that was supposed to come from you.
So I let go of the man you never were,
and mourn, instead, the father I deserved—
a figure woven from dreams of tenderness,
and the beauty that could’ve been…
had you only dared to care.
By Akanksha Patil
Beautifully Written...!
Good work, keep it up.
Best one❤️
Wow so nice 😍
Speechless with full of tears