When my father died, we were at home. Not by choice—by protocol. He had cancer, the kind that doesn’t unfold gently. It accelerates. No stages, no warning, just a sharp descent. They admitted him quickly. Then the rules began: no visitors, no contact, no closeness. Chemotherapy left him too fragile for company. We were reduced to updates over the phone, glimpses through hospital windows, his voice growing fainter with each call.

The last time I saw him, it was through a sheet of glass. His hand raised weakly, palm open. He didn’t smile. I don’t think he had the strength. I waved back, unsure if he even saw me. And that was the last moment we had.

He had always been my hero—silent, steady, certain. The kind of man who fixed broken things and never looked tired doing it. As a child, I thought he was invincible. But cancer does not respect stories. It pulled him apart slowly, without ceremony. I saw the strength leave his shoulders, his voice become thinner, his eyes dim with pain. Watching that change was like watching a monument collapse—one stone at a time.

I never told him I loved him. Not because I didn’t. Because I thought there would be time. Some softer moment. A quiet hallway. A drive home. It never came. And now, there is only the echo of that silence. A word unspoken is louder than it should be.

There are no photos of us from the last nine years. None to prove we even shared that time. The distance grew slowly, imperceptibly, like a fog you don’t notice until you’re surrounded by it. And now, there is only absence. The kind that takes up space in the room. The kind that lingers.

The day after, my computer broke. No sound, no warning—just a black screen. I stared at it for a while, waiting for something to come back. But it didn’t. I didn’t try to fix it. Some things go quiet, and that’s the decision.

I tried to write again. I used to write endlessly—strange stories, long nights. But now the words are stiff. They arrive like strangers, not companions. What I write feels cold, disconnected. Others still tell me it moves them, but I can’t feel it myself. Their praise is distant. Their warmth doesn’t enter the room.

Do they mean it? I don’t ask. I’ve learned that some questions only multiply. They bloom in the dark. They crowd the mind. I feel like the subject of a press conference I never agreed to. Questions everywhere. Voices overlapping. The only problem is—I’m not the person being questioned. I am the room.

My brother says the future is bright for us. I nod. I don’t say that brightness unsettles me. That it feels foreign, untouchable. Darkness, at least, knows me. It doesn’t demand anything.

They say fate has a shape. But I don’t believe in design. If there is a code behind this world, it was written without grace. And those who step outside the bounds—who falter, break, question—they are seen as errors. Society notices the glitch, not the cause.

If that’s what I am, then I won’t apologize.

Let me be the broken syntax. The unreadable line. Not the moral, not the lesson—just the silence between causes and consequences. Let me remain in the space where nothing fits. The shape of grief unspoken. The strength that faded, yet never left.

And I am still here.

Next → Chapter 1