MAJA MILOJKOVIĆ

 

 

Father's Shadow

 

You're gone, yet you’re everywhere.

In the scent of morning tea, in the quiet of the house when everything is still. In a phrase I speak, not knowing I once learned it from you.

You loved cats, dogs, birds — every creature that breathes.

You used to say animals are more honest than people, and you spoke to them as equals.

They loved you, just as the world did — quietly, but forever.

You would stand in the middle of the room and recite,

with hands that never sought applause, only to let the feeling pass through you.

In your words lived dignity, warmth, and that rare closeness that made people fall silent and listen.

You left as gently as you lived.

Without grand words, without noise.

But you didn’t disappear — you became part of everything I love.

Part of me.

Sometimes I feel you near.

In the cat curled in my lap, in the dog’s gaze waiting by the door.

In the voice that guides me when I don’t know where to go.

They say time heals.

Perhaps.

But what you were — it doesn’t fade.

It stayed. In the way I love, in the way I remain silent, in a gaze that still seeks kindness.

Sometimes I write you letters.

No address, no stamp.

Only the heart knows where they go.

And I don’t cry as often now,

but when the wind stirs the curtains —

I know it’s you.

Your gentle spirit, your silence that embraces better

 

MAJA MILOJKOVIĆ