The unique way this collection is written is that the meaning and the story changes based on perspective. The overarching theme is the story about love, loss, reconciliation between a father and son. The interpretation of the story changes based on whether you read it as the Son being the narrator or the Father.
The air between us has been thick with silence for years. Her absence lives in these spaces—a ghost. A choice. Each of us protecting our version of the truth. Not knowing that setting it free was the only way we would heal.
I stand in the doorway of his room, watching him with her photograph. His hands gently caress the frame. I know what he feels. Love, perpetually intertwined with loss and longing.
My hand traces the doorframe, feeling the marks. Each notch depicting another year that had passed, another mile further, another moment of silence, another new way to misunderstand each other.
She would have known what to do.
He turned to face me slowly, as if knowing that I had been there all along.
It wasn’t your fault.
The response was a few years too late. But it was time. I should have been stronger. Should have fought harder. Should have understood that grief doesn’t travel in straight lines—it circles back, catches us both in its wake. But I didn’t. I was too wrapped in my own pain to see his, and he was too lost in his to see mine.
I wish things were different.
I replied, meaning to heal, but maybe hurting instead. I stared at the past like a scar I can’t touch. If only I had known that he wasn’t pushing me away — he was trying to hold on without knowing how. Or perhaps I was the one who didn’t know how to hold on, watching him drift in a sea of memories I couldn’t share.
Her photo watches us both, caught between what was and what could have been. Sometimes I see her in his eyes when he looks at me, and I wonder if he sees her in mine when I turn away.
I’m sorry. For the blame I couldn’t help but feel. For the love I couldn’t help but withhold. For making her absence a weapon between us.
But maybe he’s saying the same words, in another room, to another photograph, in another moment that mirrors this one perfectly.
Continue Reading – Please forgive me
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