when i think of fathers,
i think of the ways absence rearranges a room.
in my friend’s hallway, there’s a photo—
his father before the war,
smiling like someone who hadn’t yet been asked
to trade his tenderness for survival.
they say he lives here.
that he eats with them,
sleeps on the same side of the bed
every night.
but the frame is the only place
where light still touches his face.
my friend’s mother dusts the glass
every sunday
with the end of her dupatta.
sometimes she talks to it
like it’s still him.
i asked him once
what changed.
he said:
some men come back
with all their bones intact,
but none of their softness.
what is grief,
if not the quiet violence
of watching someone
stay alive
but never quite return?
what is a family,
if not a collection of people
waiting for someone
who is already in the room?
his tea always grows cold
before he remembers to drink it.
bitterness knows its own timing.
and i keep thinking—
how many homes survive
on the pictures that remember
what the men forgot
to carry home.
—Noor ul Taba
