poem
There lived a father
3 min read
who mistook fear for a crown, — a man so hollow
who mistook fear for a crown,
a man so hollow
that every truth spoken near him
echoed like thunder
through walls he spent a lifetime building.
He preached with polished lips,
yet his hands remembered
what no child should ever teach the night to forget.
His son became a mirror.
That was the crime.
Not rebellion.
Not hatred.
Only the unbearable courage
to name the beast
that had slept beneath the family table
feeding on silence.
The father looked into those eyes
and found no servant,
only a witness.
And witnesses
terrify kings made of dust.
So he sharpened whispers
instead of knives.
He poured suspicion into willing cups,
mixed lies with sympathy,
called poison "protection,"
and sent smiling faces
to finish what his secrets had begun.
Better a dead son,
he reasoned,
than a living testimony.
How desperate
must a soul become
to murder its own blood
simply because truth
refused to die?
Yet poison has strange habits.
It wanders.
It stains every hand
that dares to carry it.
It lingers in family names,
in empty chairs,
in photographs that never smile quite right.
The son walked through valleys
where every shadow
wore his father's face.
He learned that betrayal
does not always arrive
wearing an enemy's boots.
Sometimes
it tucks you in at night,
calls itself "Dad,"
and teaches you
that silence is obedience.
But truth...
Truth is a patient thing.
It does not beg.
It does not bargain.
It waits.
Like iron beneath centuries of ash,
it remembers its own strength.
The father spent his life
burying evidence,
while the earth itself
kept count.
Every lie became another stone.
Every manipulation,
another shovelful.
Until the grave
he had dug for his son
recognized
its rightful owner.
No curse was spoken.
No revenge was taken.
Only the unbearable weight
of everything hidden
returning home.
And the son—
scarred,
weathered,
still standing—
walked beyond the ruins
without carrying the chains
that had been forged for him.
For monsters believe
they create orphans.
But sometimes,
without meaning to,
they create witnesses
who cannot be bought...
voices
that cannot be buried...
and a generation
that will never again
mistake silence
for love.