Once, I held your hands in mine.
Three tiny hands, soft and trusting.
You looked at me like I was unshakable,
A mountain you could climb,
A shelter that would never fall.
But I did fall.
I crumbled under the weight of my own mistakes.
Bad decisions, selfish choices—
I built a home of cards,
And when it collapsed, you were caught in the debris.
I watched you slip away.
Not all at once, but piece by piece.
The trust in your eyes faded first,
Then the laughter.
And finally, the warmth,
Replaced by walls too high for me to scale.
I told myself there was still time to make it right.
But then came the truth I could no longer bury.
I told you who I am,
The part of me I kept hidden, even from myself.
And instead of healing,
It pushed you further away.
Was it too much for you?
To reconcile the father you knew
With the man I had become?
Did my queerness feel like the final betrayal,
Another crack in a foundation already broken?
I try to picture what you see when you look at me now.
Is it the man who failed you years ago?
Or the man who stands before you now,
Unmasked, vulnerable, whole?
Do you even want to look?
I don’t blame you.
The wounds I caused run deep,
And maybe my truth felt like salt instead of balm.
I can’t undo the harm,
Can’t rewrite the past.
But I wonder—
Can love still find its way through the wreckage?
You are my daughters.
Nothing in this world could change that.
Not my mistakes, not my truth, not the space between us.
I still see the little girls who ran to me for comfort,
Who laughed without fear,
Who called me “Daddy” like it was the safest word in the world.
I’ve changed, but that love hasn’t.
It never will.
Forgiveness isn’t simple.
It’s messy and raw and sometimes unfair.
But it’s also the only way forward.
If I could, I’d take your pain and carry it for you,
But I can’t.
All I can do is stand here, with my heart open,
And hope you’ll meet me halfway.
Three daughters.
Three pieces of my soul, scattered but not lost.
The door is open.
I’m still here, waiting,
Hoping for a chance to rebuild,
To love without fear,
To prove that this father—flawed, but unwavering—
Still belongs to you.
But if you don’t come—
If the anger is too much, if the hurt is too sharp—
Know this:
I will never stop loving you.
I will carry your names in my heart
For every breath I take,
Every step I walk.
I will wait.
Through the silence, through the years,
Through the ache that gnaws at my chest.
Because that’s what love does.
It doesn’t quit.
It doesn’t leave.
It holds on, even when the hands it longs for
Refuse to reach back.
I will wait for the day you find me again.
And if that day never comes,
I’ll still be here,
Loving you from this distance,
Until the very end.
