The Red Thread

I still set a place for you
without meaning to.
Grief teaches your hands
to move like ghosts—
reaching for things
that aren’t there anymore.

People say time softens loss,
but they never tell you
how heavy the softening feels.
How the smallest things—
a laugh that sounds like yours,
a song you once hummed—
can split you open
like it’s the very first day
all over again.

Some mornings
I wake up forgetting you’re gone,
and for a breath
the world feels whole.
Then the remembering hits—
a cold, familiar wound—
and I crumble quietly
so no one hears.

You left
in a moment I can’t rewrite,
a moment I replay
until it cuts me raw.
Sometimes I blame myself
for not holding tighter,
for not knowing
that the last time
was the last time.

I talk to you
in the dark,
like maybe the silence
can carry my words
to wherever you rest now.
I tell you I’m trying.
I tell you I’m learning
to live around the ache.

But every night,
I still feel the outline
of where you should be—
a shape carved into the world
that nothing else fits.

I don’t know
if this sorrow ever ends.
I only know
I carry you with me
in every quiet step,
every trembling breath,
every piece of my life
that still remembers
how to love you.