🍁 A Father's Lament 🍁 Poem by Santanu Banerjee

🍁 A Father's Lament 🍁
Santanu Banerjee

In the quiet of this hollow home I wait,
Where your laughter once bloomed in every room.
The empty echoes now my only fate,
As shadows fall upon this endless gloom.

I see your faces, soft and pure as dawn,
Your tiny hands that used to cling to mine.
The elder, seven, with her smile withdrawn,
The little one, still swaddled in my rhyme.

Oh, how I sang those nursery songs of old,
Your eyes would gleam like stars within the night.
Your giggles, now a story left untold,
Are lost to me, like birds in distant flight.

Regret, a river running deep and wide,
I cannot cross, though I would give my all,
To bring you here, beside me where you hide—
But walls between us rise, unbreakable.

Your mother keeps you locked within her heart,
A place where I am but a ghost of dreams.
Does she not see how we are torn apart,
How every tear unravels silent seams?

Perhaps one day, the sun will rise anew,
And she will see the truth I hold so tight—
That love is not a thing to split in two,
But grows where hearts unite within the light.

Until that day, I wait, though time grows cold,
Each memory a relic I must bear.
My daughters, though I cannot make you whole,
My love will reach you, scattered through the air.

I watch the swing you once flew high upon,
The toys, now still, untouched by little hands.
And though the days of play are fading fast,
I hope you hear me, far across these lands.

For in my heart, you are forever near --
My children, distant, yet always held so dear.