A Father Without A Son Poem by Simon Jonathan Bulus

A Father Without a Son
He is his father—
a name spoken, Or title worn like a borrowed robe?
loose on the shoulders of responsibility.
A father who does not have a son,
not because the son was never born,
but because presence was never given,
and love was never learned.

He walked through years like a shadow,
seen, yet never felt,
a voice that echoed in empty rooms
but never settled in a waiting heart.
A father who existed all his life,
yet never truly lived in mine,
his hands were near,
but they never reached.

I learned to tie my fears alone,
to silence questions before they formed,
to grow without the warmth of guidance,
to bloom in a garden left untended.


What is a father?
Is it blood, or the quiet strength that stays?
Is it a name, or the love that does not leave?
He was there,
but not there enough
to build, to shape, to stand,
to be the shelter in my storm.

So I became my own answer,
my own shelter, my own guide,
a son not raised by his father's discipline,
but by the absence he left behind.
And now I stand—
not as the boy he never knew,
but as the man he never chose to raise

A writer and a teacher. When I write, I right wrongs.
Jonathan Simon Bulus