Not the voice—
though I still hear it
in the way wind moves through curtains
on certain afternoons.
Not the hands—
though I still feel them
when I lift something heavy,
when I hold something breakable.
What remains is stranger.
The way he tilted his head
before answering a hard question—
I do that now.
The way he hummed without knowing,
a tuneless thing,
while reading the morning paper—
I caught myself doing it
last Sunday,
and froze,
and listened
to the ghost in my throat.
He taught me to tie a tie
by standing behind me,
our hands moving together
in the mirror.
Now every knot I make
is his hands
repeating their lesson.
He never said "I love you."
Not once.
But when I fell from the bicycle,
when the skin peeled from my knee
like wet petals,
he picked me up
not with his arms
but with his voice—
steady, unhurried,
as if falling
was just another way
of learning to rise.
I understand now.
Some men keep their love
in a locked drawer.
They open it only
when no one is watching.
They leave it open
just long enough
for the air to change.
Once, I found him asleep
on the couch,
the newspaper spread across his chest
like a second skin.
I watched his breath go in and out,
in and out,
and thought:
this is what holds the world together—
not prayers, not promises,
but a man breathing
in a room full of people he forgot
to tell he loved them.
He is gone now.
The house feels taller,
emptier,
like a body that has stopped breathing.
But sometimes,
when I am alone,
when the phone rings at the wrong hour,
when I solve something difficult,
when I laugh too loud at my own joke—
I feel him turn
in that vast earth,
turn toward the sound of me,
and smile
the way he smiled
when I wasn't looking.
Father,
you did not leave me.
You simply changed addresses.
Now you live
in the space between my bones
and my skin,
in the pause between my breath
and my next breath.
I carry you
the way the earth carries water—
invisibly,
essentially,
always.