Please, Papa, I am your son.
Not just a shadow trailing behind your footsteps or a quiet name spoken when others ask about you. I am the boy who waited by the door, listening for the sound of your return, believing every passing moment meant you were closer.
I learned your face through photographs before I learned it through memory. In those pictures, you were always smiling, strong, certain. I tried to match that smile in the mirror, hoping it would make me more familiar to you, hoping it would make you stay. But mirrors do not answer questions, and neither did you.
I grew up with your absence sitting beside me like an invisible guest. At school events, chairs stayed empty. On birthdays, candles burned a little faster, as if they knew wishes were fragile things. I never wished for toys or gifts. I wished for time. Just time.
Please, Papa, I am your son.
I carry your name, your blood, your unspoken stories. When people say I walk like you or laugh like you, my heart aches with pride and pain all at once. How can someone be so present in me and yet so distant from my life?
I don’t blame you the way anger demands. I try to understand the weight you carried, the roads you chose, the storms you fought in silence. But understanding does not erase the emptiness. It only explains it.
I needed your voice when I failed for the first time. I needed your hand when fear grew louder than courage. Instead, I taught myself how to be strong, stitching confidence from mistakes and learning resilience from loneliness. I survived, yes—but survival is not the same as being held.
Please, Papa, I am your son.
I am not asking for perfection. I am not asking you to rewrite the past. I am only asking to be seen. To be acknowledged. To be loved without conditions or distance.
Even now, I stand here, grown but still hopeful, believing it is not too late. That somewhere inside you, there is room for me. That one day, you will look at me not as a reminder of what you left behind, but as what you helped create.
If you ever wonder whether I needed you, the answer is simple.
I still do.
