being left in the past

blink

I cried through my heart long before I ever cried through my eyes. It was the kind of hurt that starts somewhere deep inside the chest, a tightening in the lungs, a shaking in the bones, a quiet scream that stayed trapped because life had already taught me to swallow everything, tears, hunger, fear, even hope. I grew up learning how to breathe through pain, not because I wanted to, but because survival demanded it. Every brightening space inside me, every new morning, felt like a reminder that I had another day to endure, another day to figure out how to keep moving.

Then one day, after years of absence, wandering, stories, and silence, my father came back.

His return was not a miracle. It was a storm.

A quiet storm at first, the kind that gathers itself before releasing its truth.

He walked in with a new face, a new story, a forced smile, and a voice that sounded both familiar and foreign. We stood there, all of us, watching him as though he were a stranger wearing our father’s shadow. There was joy in the air, yes, but thin joy, a kind of confusion. Mother sat still, her eyes fixed on him like she was searching for the man she once knew inside this one standing at our door. My siblings shifted uneasily, unsure whether to run to him or hide behind her. I simply stared. My eyes were tired of hoping, tired of imagining a version of him that would rescue us, and unspoken questions.

His return was supposed to heal something.

Instead, it broke every silence we had learned to live with.

He spoke of stress, of journeys, of battles we couldn't see. He said he had changed, that life had changed him. But we had changed too. Pain had shaped us into different people, quieter, older inside, more cautious with the way we trusted.