Dear Daisy

By Anshul Purvia

Dear Daisy,

We came from the same kind of silence.

The kind that hums under broken ceilings.

Me with my father's absence, you with your father’s shadow.

Two children who learned too young that love was something you had to earn.

We found each other in that chaos, two lost satellites colliding in orbit.

And for a while, it felt like home.

Not the kind of home made of walls and dinners,

but the kind built from shared wounds and whispered truths at 2 a.m.

You were wild where I was gentle.

Loud where I was soft.

You demanded to be seen,

and I learned to disappear to make others comfortable.

Both of us, coping in our own way —

both of us calling it survival.

But survival turns sour when you start confusing it with entitlement.

You wore your pain like armor and swung it at anyone who got too close.

I wore mine like a soft cloak and used it to shelter whoever shivered in the cold.

That’s what tore us apart, isn’t it?

You thought your scars gave you the right to hurt,

and I thought mine gave me the duty to heal.

Both wrong. Both bleeding.

Just different kinds of broken.

I never hated you.

I just wished you’d understood,

we don’t have to become what hurt us.

We don’t have to keep the cycle spinning.

Trauma is given, yes —

but cruelty is chosen.

You say “Hurt people,hurt people.”

But some hurt people hold others together.

Some build safety out of shrapnel.

Some smile through pain so others won’t feel alone.

I became that.

You didn’t.

When you left, it wasn’t the betrayal that broke me —

it was the silence that followed.

The realization that someone who knew my darkness

still chose to bring more of it.

That’s the kind of ache that doesn’t fade.

It just… settles.

But I still carry light.

Not because the world deserves it,

but because I refuse to let pain make me small.

I still talk to strangers and kids.

Still keep chocolates in my pocket to give;

just in case somebody's feeling bitter.

Still show up with a smile, even when it burns.

Because that’s who I am.

That’s who I choose to be.

And maybe one day, Daisy,

you’ll choose differently too.

You’ll realize that family doesn’t always come from blood —

sometimes it’s built from people who stay when no one else does.

And when you remember me,

I hope you remember that.

We were both born from chaos.

But only one of us learned how to turn pain into light.

                                                                                      Sending love,

                                                                                           Shortcake

By Anshul Purvia