Letters without address - Part 4.

A letter to the child I never had.

Dear Child.

I don't know how to start this letter, because after all, you were never there. I have not heard your voice, I have not seen your eyes and yet, I have thought of you so many times that you seem almost real.

There were evenings when I imagined you lying next to me on the couch, cuddled up to me like a little kitten, tired from the whole day. I would tell you a story, and you would interrupt every now and then with questions, because, after all, children don't like silence.

But I...I knew this silence all too well.

Before I learned to live in solitude, I had to experience a thousand conversations we never had. You never asked me: , "Dad, why are you crying? " And I didn't answer: , "Because sometimes life hurts, baby. But it will pass."

I didn't have you, I didn't cuddle you after a nightmare, I didn't see your fever, I didn't kiss your skinned knee. I didn't teach you the multiplication tables, I didn't make sandwiches for school. You did not greet me in the morning in my pajamas, disheveled, with eyes like moons.

You were not there...and that hurts.

Sometimes I think that maybe I would be afraid, maybe I wouldn't know how to be a good father, maybe life would overwhelm me and you would feel my fear. but I would be, I would be next to you, maybe not perfect, but yours.

You know...I thought of you most often when I saw other fathers. In the park, at the bus stop, at the game. I envied them not for their joy, but for their purpose. Because there was a clarity in their eyes that I did not have.

There was a lot of silence in my life, too much. And today I know that much of that silence had your shape, your absent presence.

Maybe your name would have been Mark or Isabella. Maybe you would like dogs or be afraid of thunderstorms and hide your head under my shoulder. Maybe you would draw crooked houses, which I would still hang on the refrigerator as masterpieces. Maybe...

You see? Even today I am writing to you , “maybe”, because I have nothing else left. Only suppositions, only silent dreams that I don't know if they will come true.

I do not know why you did not come. Maybe there was no place, no time, no courage. Maybe life went another way. but sometimes I think that I was the one who didn't know how to create you. That I was afraid I wouldn't be able to bear the love I would feel for you.

And maybe I'm writing this letter not to you, but to that part of myself that still loves you - even though it doesn't know you. Which carries a void in its heart in the shape of your hand.

Today, when I look at the children on the street - running, screaming, laughing - I smile but for a moment. Then always comes a silent shadow, because you never said to me , “Dad”.

My dear child, wherever you are - in another world, in a dream, in my conscience - I want you to know one thing: I wanted you, I loved you before you came into existence, and I love you still, even though you were never there.

Maybe this is why.

I close my eyes and see you, standing on the edge of my life, as if you wanted to enter, but the door did not open, and I apologize to you. I'm sorry for a life that didn't give you a chance.

But don't go away, stay in my thoughts and dreams a little longer. Stay as long as it takes, because even if I didn't have you, after all, in my heart you are mine.

You have always been.

With tenderness and tears. Your dad.