To Olivia And Carissa Poem by Martins Akhoeneto

For my daughters

Before the dawn first whispered your names,
I loved you.
Before your first cry stitched itself into the air,
my heart had already become your home.

You are the sunrise I carried in silence,
the soft rain that found a weary earth,
the brightest verses ever written
into the fragile pages of my life.

If someday you walk through storms of stories,
where truth is dressed in borrowed clothes
and love is questioned by louder voices,
remember this:

The tallest trees are often blamed for the shadows they cast,
yet their roots still drink from honest ground.
Judge not by echoes,
but by the footprints left behind.

Measure a father
not by the words spoken against him,
but by the nights he stayed awake,
the prayers he whispered,
the battles he fought unseen,
and the dreams he built with bleeding hands.

There are silences I cannot yet explain,
wounds that time alone must uncover.
Truth is a patient river;
it does not shout.
It flows until every stone is washed clean.

If distance ever stood between us,
know this:
it was never the absence of love.
Some departures are not surrender—
they are the shelter built before the storm arrives.

You are my blood,
my living poetry,
the inheritance no thief can steal.
Wherever my footsteps end,
my blessings will continue walking beside you.

Grow with kindness.
Stand with courage.
Choose mercy over bitterness,
wisdom over anger,
and truth over easy comfort.

Should the world ever ask who your father was,
tell them he loved without measure,
hoped without ceasing,
and carried your names
like two stars stitched into the night sky.

And if one day these words are all that remain,
let them testify that my greatest title
was never written on paper,
but spoken by two precious voices:

Daddy.

For as long as rivers remember the sea,
as long as morning returns after the darkest night,
my love for you, Olivia and Carissa,
will outlive time itself.