For Christopher
— always playing forward —
Crying is just the way your eyes speak,
when your mouth can't explain how broken your heart is.
Some pain is too deep for words,
some wounds are too quiet for screams.
Christopher — my son, my boy —
there's a garage that still smells of fresh paint and fuel,
a stretch of road that remembers your tires,
the long, beautiful arc of a drift
that only you could hold just right.
You spoke in horsepower and color,
in the growl of an engine and the sweep of a turn —
and when the engines went quiet,
you spoke in music instead:
piano under your hands, guitar against your chest,
the deep voice of the cello drawn from your bow,
a sound that filled the whole house.
And it still fills it.
It lives in your sisters now —
iPhone drawing the bow across her violin strings,
Nano finding the same keys you found,
both of them playing forward
the song you started.
So I let the tears fall, and trust that somehow
they carry the weight my words never could,
all the way up to wherever you are.
And maybe that's how I keep you, Christopher:
not in the silence, but in the music —
in every engine, every note, every painted curve of light,
in the hope that you are home now,
unburdened, unbroken, at rest,
and you don't hurt anymore.
by Dad, 2026
