The pain I had to Bottle
They say a son needs his father,
But my father was a ghost—
A name whispered, a shadow never seen.
The space he left was filled with questions,
A silence so loud,
I learned to hear it in my bones.
Then came the day she left,
My mother—my world,
Gone in the blink of an eye,
Leaving me with nothing but memories
And the hollow ache of grief.
A son without a father,
A boy without a mother,
Trying to make sense of a life that was never whole.
They told me to bottle it up,
The pain, the anger, the loss—
"Don’t let it show," they said.
But how do you bottle something so heavy,
When the weight of it bends your soul,
When the tears you cry are rivers
That could flood the world?
But then, they told me—
"Publish your notes. Let the world see your heart."
And though I wanted to hide,
Though fear wrapped its cold fingers around my throat,
I found courage in the words,
In the poems I had written—
The only way I knew how to breathe.
The pain I had to bottle
Was no longer my burden alone.
It spilled onto pages,
Into verses,
Into lines that spoke louder than my silence.
I found my voice in the brokenness,
A voice that carried the weight of my grief
But also the fire to rise above it.
I’m fatherless,
I’m motherless,
But I am not broken.
I am the sum of my pain and strength,
The courage to face the world
With nothing but words
And the courage to keep going
Even when it feels like I have nothing left.
The pain I had to bottle,
Now it runs free,
In every poem, every note,
Every truth I let the world see.
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