Dad
I wonder what you’d think of me now.
Would you be proud?
Disappointed?
Mad at me for not becoming more than this?
I tell myself you’d love me.
I tell myself you wouldn’t look at me
and call me a failure.
But my mind only knows extremes—
right or wrong,
worthy or not.
My family says they love me.
They show it.
Still, something in me tries to believe
I’m the exception,
the one who doesn’t deserve it.
Would that be different if you were here?
I try.
I care.
I give more than I ever get back.
Is that enough?
Am I enough?
You used to push me.
Tell me I could fight,
could stand,
could become something stronger
than what tried to break me.
Would you still say that now?
Or would you look at me
with the kind of silence that hurts worse
than any words could?
You left when I was still a kid—
unfinished, unformed.
So I’m left with the question
that never stops echoing:
What would you say to me now?
Yes, he would. 🫂
This poem feels like standing in front of absence and asking it to speak.
The voice is tender, uncertain, caught between hope and fear would a father be proud, or silent?
Every line carries the ache of unfinished love, the wound of being left too soon.
Family offers affection, yet the speaker doubts, believing himself the exception, undeserving of care.
The questions “Am I enough?” echo like prayers, fragile and desperate for recognition.
Memories of encouragement become both strength and torment, reminders of what is missing now.
The imagined silence of the father hurts more than words, a void heavier than anger.
The poem captures the loneliness of growing unformed, carrying the weight of unanswered questions.
It is not only grief, but longing for affirmation, for a voice that says “you are enough.”
In its raw honesty, the piece becomes a mirror of love’s endurance, even when it has no reply.