Fathers in Quiet Rooms

They don’t talk much.
They sit with newspapers they don’t read, chairs they don’t leave, clocks they don’t reset.
The rooms are quiet.
Even the floorboards know to keep their voices down.

You ask them how they are, and they say, “Fine.”
It doesn’t mean good.
It means I’m still here.
It means I haven’t stopped yet.

They measure days in coffee cups and commercials.
They remember things they don’t say out loud—
a belt hanging behind a door,
a name whispered once in a hospital hallway,
a fight they wish they’d started, or stopped.

They used to hold things—tools, children, mistakes.
Now their hands twitch like they’ve forgotten what they were made for.

Some of them wait for forgiveness.
Some of them don’t believe in it anymore.
Some still think it’s coming,
tucked inside a phone call
or the way someone finally says their name like it means something.

And when they cry—if they cry—
it sounds like breathing,
or like nothing at all.

By: Dan Brown