I’m supposed to be writing this letter for my daughter’s graduation. My little girl, you know? She’s gonna walk across that stage next month and I want to give her something… real. Something she can keep, pull out years from now, remember her old man by. So I sit down at the kitchen table after the night shift, everyone else asleep. The house is dark except for the glow of the laptop. My coffee tastes like rust and regret. I got this nice paper, a fancy pen, the whole nine yards. Wanted to do it right. But the words… they just weren’t there. My head felt like one of those old coin-op laundromats, all empty machines and stale air. I tried. I really did. Sat there for an hour, maybe more, just staring at the blank page. The only thing that came out was "To my dear daughter," and then nothing. Just crickets, man. My heart, it felt like a flat stone in my chest. No rhythm, no nothing. I kept thinking about all the bills piling up, the roof that needs patching, the car making that weird noise. All the stuff that keeps you up at night when you’re just trying to keep your head above water. So, yeah. I cheated. I typed a few things into the AI. "Heartfelt letter for daughter’s graduation," "love, pride, future," that kind of stuff. And it… it just spit out paragraphs. Beautiful ones. Stuff I could never string together on my best day. Things about her being a "bright star" and "a light in my life." Sentences that made my throat tight even though *I* didn't write 'em. One line, it said something like, "Watching you spread your wings fills me with a quiet wonder, like seeing the first robin of spring." A robin. Spring. I mean, c’mon. That’s GOOD. And that’s where the gut punch landed. Not the happy kind, you know? More like a slow, dull ache behind my ribs. I’m copying these beautiful words onto this expensive paper, and my hand is steady. TOO steady. It feels like I’m forging something. Like I’m stealing someone else’s heart and trying to pass it off as my own. My daughter, she's gonna read this, and she’s gonna think these are *my* feelings, *my* poetry. And they are, kinda. But they’re also… not. It’s like buying a ready-made meal and telling everyone you cooked it from scratch. Except this isn’t food. This is… love. Or what’s supposed to be love, anyway. The sun’s starting to come up now, painting the kitchen window in stripes of pale yellow. The coffee’s cold. I got this letter in front of me, full of perfectly crafted sentiments. It looks perfect. It reads perfect. But my stomach feels like I just ate a handful of gravel. I’m thinking about the look on her face when she opens it. Will she see through it? Will she sense the hollowness? Or will she just see a good letter from a dad who finally found the right words? I don’t know, man. I just don't know. Feels like I bought a ticket to a show I’m not even in.