A Father's footprints.

"The imprint of a father remains on the soul of the child long after the footsteps fade."

A Father’s Footprints

Some were made for bedtime stories and strong shoulders.
Some could fix a tap, a tire, or a broken heart,
while others barely knew how to hold their own pieces together.

Some left early.
Some stayed, but never really arrived.
Some did their best with what they had,
and some gave us nothing but a surname and a silence.

Still, they left footprints.
Some gentle, like a hand on the small of your back.
Some deep, like a scar that taught you where not to walk.
Some invisible - but there, always.

To the fathers who tried.
To the ones who failed.
To the ones who made us laugh, who made us strong,
who taught us to stand up, speak up, show up,
or who taught us, by their absence, how to carry our own weight.

You left your mark.
On our bones.
In our breath.
In the way we love, fight, forgive.
In the way we raise our voices, or our children.
In the way we remember.

Today, we don’t all raise glasses.
Some of us just raise eyebrows.
Because not every man who made a baby was made to be a dad -
some were just, well, donors.
But even they left footprints.
Even they left lessons.

So here's to all of it.
To what we had.
To what we survived.
To what we became.

Because of you.
Or in spite of you.
Thank you.