There were nights I folded into myself
A silence not of peace, but pause,
Where memory clung like sweat to old Regrets,
And the dark was just thick enough to Speak.
A younger version of me still walks there,
Half-shouting at ghosts,
Half-sure he knows better.

The road I paved was not always stone…
Sometimes glass,
Sometimes the brittle hush of unspoken Apologies.
My hands, calloused from more than labor,
Have carried the sharp edges of Consequence,
Have held a child’s future like a fragile flame
And nearly dropped it once or twice.

Fatherhood did not come with a compass.
It came like weather,
Sudden and vast;
With no promise of shelter, only sky.
And still, I stepped out.
Still, I walked.

There were questions I answered with my Absence,
Lessons I taught by stumbling.
And yet each tear I have dried
Has felt like redemption.
Each scraped knee, a liturgy
In the cathedral of trying again.

You learn that love,
Real love,
Isn’t found in the perfection of the path
But in turning back for the small hand that Trusts you still.

Now, she laughs.
And in her laughter is a map
Of every right thing I did
Despite myself.

And I know,
No matter how far I wandered from grace,
It was worth it.
Not for a second chance,
But for the first time I truly listened
To what love sounds like
When it calls you “Dad.”