Grieving What Never Was

By Akanksha Patil

If I could mourn you,

I would weep as daughters do—

bending beneath sorrow’s weight,

sinking into the soft ruins of memory.

But no elegy shelters you; no sanctuary, no shrine.

Only silence reigns, vast and unyielding,

an endless ache where a father should stand.

Now I see you here, not as a person, but a mass,

a body absent of the warmth it was meant to give.

And I realize you were always this silent with me,

a statue, distant and unfeeling, heavy with words unspoken,

holding everything but the ones I longed to hear.

They say grief comes dressed in waves,

a tide meant to lift and carry us home.

But all I feel is the barren shore—

empty, unforgiving, washed clean

of any trace of love, of tenderness,

of the warmth I never knew.

If only you had been worthy of tears,

they’d spill like rivers, winding back

to moments I could carry close—

mornings drenched in light, hands that held gently,

words soft as summer rain, promises kept.

But you left me nothing but shadows of neglect,

a stranger to tenderness, a figure I learned to fear.

You gave me life yet remained a stranger,

rooted in soil too shallow to nurture.

I am both daughter and orphan,

reaching for an embrace that never held me,

a father who was there in form, but empty in soul.

And here, now, I bury the dream of you,

a father I crafted from hollow memories,

an embrace I carved from longing.

I mourn the ghost of who you might have been,

the father I fashioned in my solitude—

a sanctuary I built from wishes, unbroken and kind.

I don’t grieve your passing; I grieve the life

I might have led if only you’d taught me

the language of love, the simple grace of being seen.

You, who could give me life but not a home,

left me clinging to echoes, yearning for the light

that was supposed to come from you.

So I let go of the man you never were,

and mourn, instead, the father I deserved—

a figure woven from dreams of tenderness,

and the beauty that could’ve been…

had you only dared to care.

By Akanksha Patil