SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue Two - Journal - Page 83
the man who had stood there. But I could not. I only felt small. I only felt the air that you
had left behind.
I took them off and ran back inside. I wiped the mud from my feet and said nothing.
But that feeling stayed with me, Papa. That strange, tight feeling in the chest. The
knowledge that absence can fit so snugly around your skin that you mistake it for inheritance.
I have worn that absence longer than I ever wore those slippers. I have carried it into my
marriage, into fatherhood. I have passed it, unknowingly, into rooms where my silence meant
something I never intended. I find myself withholding joy the way you did—storing it in
hidden corners, saving it for days that never arrive. I find myself leaving rooms without
explanation, thinking space will heal what words cannot. I find myself becoming the shape I
hated, the outline of a man who once filled a house and then vanished from it.
I do not write this to blame you. I write this because I want to stop becoming you.
Tonight, I looked at Ugo as he slept. His chest rose and fell with that deep, steady rhythm
children have when they dream without worry. He murmured something—just a sound, not
a word—and turned on his side. I thought of how many nights I fell asleep waiting for you
to come back, how often I dreamed you were standing in the corridor, smiling, holding a bag
of roasted groundnuts and asking if I had behaved. I do not want my son to wait for ghosts.
I want him to know my footsteps by sound. I want him to know the difference between rain
and silence.
I have written this letter with no intention of sending it. There is no address. No name
on the envelope. But it is here now, real and complete. I have said the things that have lived
in my chest for twenty years. I have called you by your absence, by the sound of rain that
never touches skin. I have mourned you without knowing if you are dead. I have forgiven you
without hearing you ask for it.
The lantern is flickering now. The oil is low. The room is almost dark, and I feel no fear.
Just quiet. I fold the letter. I place it on the table. And I blow out the light.
59
