2000
Tell me
What kind of man
can hear his own children cry
and somehow mistake it
for silence?
What kind of blood
flows through veins
that never ache
for the lives it helped create?
You planted seeds,
then cursed the tree
for needing water.
You call yourself a father,
but the title rejects you
the way your children
wait for you
and are rejected
over and over again.
Love was never your language.
Convenience was.
You visited when it fed your ego.
You disappeared
when it required sacrifice.
Your children
didn’t lose a father.
They lost the illusion
that one ever existed.
And maybe that’s the cruelest part.
You don’t just abandon people.
You erase yourself
until all that’s left
is an empty chair
and questions
too young to be answered.
I have searched
for the humanity inside you.
I looked beneath the excuses.
Beneath the lies.
Beneath the rehearsed apologies
that never lasted
longer than your next desire.
There was nothing there.
Just a man
starving for validation
while letting his own children
go hungry
for love.
You wear deception
like expensive cologne.
Every woman meets
the version of you
carefully stitched together
with borrowed charm,
empty promises,
and practiced smiles.
You sell yourself
like a fairy tale
the misunderstood prince,
the good man
wronged by everyone else.
But the paint always cracks.
Because truth
has a habit
of surviving the performance.
You lie
as naturally
as most people breathe.
Not because you have to.
Because honesty
would force you
to meet the stranger
staring back
from the mirror.
And that stranger
terrifies you.
So you chase women
instead of accountability.
You collect bodies
instead of character.
You mistake attention
for love,
lust
for connection,
and conquest
for worth.
You don’t build families.
You leave them behind.
Children become names
you rarely speak.
Birthdays become dates
you conveniently forget.
Responsibilities become burdens
you expect someone else
to carry.
You leave mothers
to explain
why Daddy didn’t come.
Again.
You don’t hate your children
with your words.
You hate them
with your absence.
With every promise broken.
With every dollar withheld.
With every bedtime
they searched the door
hoping today
would finally be different.
Hatred
isn’t always loud.
Sometimes,
it looks exactly
like indifference.
I’ve tried
to understand your mind.
How does someone
walk away
from pieces of themselves?
Maybe because
you’ve never known
who you are.
A man
without integrity
learns to survive
by becoming
whoever the room
wants him to be.
You shape-shift.
Lover today.
Victim tomorrow.
Hero in your own stories.
Ghost
in everyone else’s.
You run from truth
because truth
demands responsibility.
Responsibility demands sacrifice.
Sacrifice demands love.
And love
real love
has always been
too expensive
for someone
who refuses
to pay the cost.
One day,
your children
will stop waiting.
They’ll grow.
They’ll laugh.
They’ll heal.
They’ll learn
that your absence
was never a reflection
of their worth.
It was always
a confession
of yours.
Because only
a hollow man
can stand before
his own flesh and blood
and choose
to be a stranger.
That is your legacy.
Not the lies you told.
Not the women you fooled.
Not the image you fought so hard to protect.
But the children
who learned
what love should never look like
by surviving
the man
who refused
to give it.
