A FATHER LOVE.
The first time he gave me life,I entered the world crying.
The second time, he watched me return to it.
There is something haunting about fathers who love quietly.
The kind of men who do not know how to braid tenderness into sentences, so they weave it into sacrifice instead.
Maybe he was never the type to say “I love you” every morning.
Maybe his affection lived in repaired school shoes, long drives home, extra meat in your plate when he thought you weren’t looking.
Maybe love, for him, was always practical. Silent. Heavy.
And then one day, doctors sat him down beneath unforgiving hospital lights and told him his daughter’s body was failing her.
And suddenly, the same man who taught her how to cross roads…
became the bridge keeping her alive.
No hesitation.
No bargaining.
Just a signature trembling slightly beneath fluorescent lights.
Just a father deciding that if her body was losing the fight, his would step in.
How do you even survive being loved like that?
To know somewhere beneath your father’s ribs
was a piece of your survival waiting patiently for you.
I think that is what breaks me most about fathers.
Not their strength.
Not their protection.
But the terrifying softness hidden beneath all that silence.
Because imagine lying in a hospital bed and realising the reason your heart still reaches tomorrow…
is because your father carved tomorrow out of himself and handed it to you.
The first time he gave her life,
she entered the world crying.
The second time,
he watched her return to it.
Poetry by Ogundu Christabel oluebube (Chrisie)
Read 21 times
Written on 2026-05-13 at 20:57
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