The Scar is Where the Light Refused to Leave

I carry the silence of my father in my bones.

He was a man of few words and many wounds. He never taught me how to love—only how to stay. He stayed through storms, heartbreaks, and cancer. He stayed when his body gave up but his eyes still held the sky.

The day he died, I didn’t cry. I carved his name in my notebook. I lit a candle that never went out. I spoke to his absence more than I ever spoke to him.

Years later, I met a woman who traced the veins on my hand like they were roads back to my childhood. She saw the boy I buried beneath years of pretending to be unbreakable.

She once touched my scar and said,
“The scar is where the light refused to leave.”

That line stayed.

Tattooed not just on my skin, but somewhere deeper. Somewhere marrow meets memory. Somewhere my father still sits quietly, proud of the man I became—not because I never broke, but because I did.

And kept glowing.

I don’t tell this story often. But if someone asks why I got that line inked on my chest, I tell them:

Because we’re all stitched together by pain and light.

And some lights never go out.