She chose silence, cold and cruel, as if she had realized too early a truth that a child should not understand
Tears don’t change anything in a world so cruel.
I was betting
Every day.
I feel like I’m standing in front of the wreckage of a life, trying to rebuild it with my own hands, without having enough tools.
And at that moment,
I have no choice.
Either I’ll be everything to them.
Or let them get lost like everything wasted before them.
In the early years of his absence, I was living in a constant state of vigilance
It’s like I’m waiting for him to come back any minute.
I was convinced deep down that Idris would return.
There must be a logical explanation for everything that happened.
Maybe it was a temporary collapse.
Or trying to run away in search of work.
Or a hidden burden he couldn’t stand before he confronted his daughters.
I was creating excuses for him one by one.
I even told the girls stories about his love for them, and I try to keep his image in their eyes, as if I were protecting a statue that began to erode, and I alone see the cracks that are slowly spreading in it.
But
Weeks have passed.
Then I melted in months.
And the months have hardened to become years.
And many years of silence.
His absence is no longer just an idea
It became a real weight that inhabited the house.
Like he’s a fifth person.
He sits with us at the dining table.
Walking in the hallways,
He attends at every moment of silence,
It always reminds us that someone was here and then disappeared.
As the years go by,
The differences are gone.
There’s no difference between being their aunt and being their mother.
Everyday life has melted everything.
I was the one who was signing the school papers.
And hold their hair when they get sick.
And I sit in the first grades in every school show, looking at faces instead of them, so that they don’t feel like they’re missing.
I’m the one with whom I’m confronted by teenage disappointments.
And breaks
First Hearts
Pressure of Choices
Fear of the future.
I was the only constant in their lives.
And with time
They’re not my nieces anymore.
They became my daughters.
The only way that really matters.
By coming.
To be present every day without disappearing.
Then
Last week.
The ghost’s back.
A sharp knock on the door cut off a normal Tuesday afternoon, and when I opened it,
The air from my chest is gone.
Idris was standing in front of me.
But not as I remember it.
His features seemed as if life had passed through a cruel tool, scraped young people from it, and left a tired, rough, and strange face that could hardly be recognized.
Back, in the kitchen.
The girls were laughing.
A normal moment.
Light
Innocent
Unaware, it is the man on the threshold who carries their blood.
Idris looked at me.
And there was something in his eyes that I had never seen before.
Fear and surrender.
It’s like he expects me to react scream, hit, or even fire him.
But he didn’t say anything.
Just one step closer.
He whispered in a faint voice.
After their m0ther’s death, I raised my three nieces like they were my daughters for fifteen years… until he came back last week.
