Garden of ashes

A father should be the first boundary of the world.

Not to confine you,

but to know how far you can extend yourself.

In his gaze you learn

whether your mere existence is enough

or whether it must be justified.

When that affirmation exists,

doubt does not rule.

One may make mistakes,

but will not surrender out of fear.

When it is absent, instead,

life becomes a search without a name.

You don’t know exactly what you need,

you only know that something is not firm.

So you begin to accept half-presences,

incomplete words,

hands that do not stay.

Not out of naivety,

but because emptiness weighs.

A human being prefers a brief caress

to none at all.

Prefers to feel chosen for a moment

rather than not be seen.

And so, slowly,

you learn to reduce your measure, your space.

To adjust yourself.

To call destiny

what was only absence.

A father should teach

that value does not depend on who looks at it.

That refusing less

is not hardness,

but fidelity to one’s own being.

But when that lesson never arrives,

one has to discover it alone.

And that discovery

does not fill the soul, does not echo within you as you might have expected.

It is quiet, almost hollow.

It happens on a day

when you decide

not to bend anymore.

Not because you are no longer afraid,

but because you understand

that existing

should not feel

like asking for permission.