It’s been twenty-seven years without my father

And my mother hates me because I look like him,

I mean, the man who raped her at fifteen.

My father was simply absent,

and I grew up learning how to miss someone I had never known.

How do you forgive a man who abandoned you

before you learned how to blame him?

I hated him until I realized my anger

had become another father, always present, always raising me.

So I took the step of faith: I FORGAVE HIM.

Not because he returned, not because he apologized,

not because he deserved it.

I forgave him because I wanted to heal,

though I had no proof forgiveness could save me.

I only knew his absence

would not become the inheritance I hand my child.