Vestige

When I first opened my eyes

I was not entirely awake

Nor entirely asleep

I still do not know

which side of consciousness

I occupied

Only that he was there

My father

Or the memory of him

Or whatever remains of love

after the body has gone

I saw him

Or perhaps I felt him first

The unmistakable scent

of a freshly ironed shirt

Cotton

Starch

Warmth

The fragrance of a man

who believed appearances mattered

who pressed his collars carefully

who stepped into the world

with dignity buttoned to his throat

And then

something happened

that language still struggles to hold

I felt his love

Not remembered love

Present love

The kind that exists

when a child collapses into a parent’s arms

and discovers

that fear cannot follow them there

I could not see his face

Every time I tried

the light became unbearable

Not painful

Just impossibly bright

I would lift my eyes

and immediately close them again

Overcome

Not by fear

By radiance

As though love itself

had become too luminous

for ordinary sight

So I stopped trying to see

And instead

I rested against him

Against the crisp cotton

of his freshly ironed shirt

Against the familiar scent

of starch

and home

I buried my face there

the way children do

when they have cried enough

And suddenly

there was no grief

No loneliness

No years

No death

Only peace

The kind that asks for nothing

The kind that explains nothing

The kind that simply wraps itself

around a wounded heart

and says:

rest now

I do not know

if I dreamed him

I do not know

if the mind

hungry for comfort

created the moment itself

I only know

that when I woke

the feeling remained

The warmth remained

The certainty remained

And for one impossible instant

the distance between the living

and the dead

felt no thicker

than a bedsheet

lifting in morning light

I never saw his face

But somehow

that is not what stayed with me

What stayed

was the embrace

The starch on his shirt

The scent of being loved

The overwhelming brightness

And the strange understanding

that after all these years

what I missed most

was not my father’s face

It was the feeling

of being his daughter