There are names I don’t say out loud anymore. Not because I forgot them — but because my voice still trembles where they used to live.
Grief is strange like that. It doesn’t leave. It rearranges the furniture in your chest and calls it healing.
I’ve learned how to function with ghosts sitting at my table. How to laugh without looking at the empty chair.
Some nights I scroll through old messages like they’re scriptures. Searching for proof that it all actually happened.
That they were real. That we were real. The world keeps moving like nothing was lost.
Traffic still hums. The sun still rises. People still fall in love.
How disrespectful. No one tells you how quiet the aftermath is.
The hospital room after the machines stop. The bedroom after the door slams. The street corner after the sirens fade.
Silence is the loudest witness. I survived. That’s what they celebrate. But survival is a complicated trophy.
It shines in public and rusts in private.
Sometimes I feel guilty for breathing easy when others can’t breathe at all.
Sometimes I apologize to people who aren’t here anymore.
Sometimes I wonder if I was meant to go too — and missed my exit by accident.
I carry memories like fragile glass in my pockets. Careful not to move too fast or everything shatters again.
They say time heals. Time doesn’t heal. It teaches you how to walk without limping even though the bone never set right.
There are birthdays I still count in my head. Anniversaries I pretend not to notice.
There are songs I skip because I don’t trust myself to survive the bridge.
And yet — I keep going. Not because I’m strong. But because stopping would mean sitting alone with all the things we don’t bury.
The truth is — some losses aren’t meant to be overcome. They’re meant to be carried. Softly.
Like folded letters in a coat you refuse to throw away. And if you ever see me smiling a little too gently
just know — I’m holding something fragile inside my chest. Something that still hurts when it rains.
Some people don’t leave. They just live where it aches.