The Shadow of My Child

I see you often, a shadow without a face,

yet I see you everywhere,

child I never had....

You have your mother's eyes,

you wait for me in playgrounds I walk past,

in the small shoes of strangers,

in the silence after the church empties

and someone else's child laughs in the courtyard.

I chose another fatherhood — or it chose me —

and still you come,

So you were never absent, only scattered.

God took the one face I gave up

and broke it like bread into a hundred:

the boy who serves at the altar and forgets the bells,

the girl who asks me why the sky doesn't end,

the small hands stretched out at the rail

for their first white host.

I did not lose you.

I was given you a hundred times,

and never once to keep.

I love you so much,

child I never had.

-Fr Mirko