Where Love Heals

How do you grieve

someone

who is still alive?

Someone whose heart still beats,
whose laugh still exists somewhere
in the world—

just no longer
in yours.

Seven months.

A length of time
so small
it should fit easily
inside a sentence.

Yet somehow

you slipped into the architecture
of my days.

Now I reach for you
the way a hand reaches
for a light switch
after furniture has been moved.

Instinct.

Memory.

Absence.

My phone lights up.

For one reckless second,
hope arrives
before reason.

It is never you.

And grief,

I am learning,

is not always a violent thing.

Sometimes it is quiet.

A chair left empty.

A conversation
with nowhere to go.

The hardest part

is that you still exist.

Living.

Laughing.

Breathing.

While I stand here

mourning someone
who has not died—

only departed.

As if there is a difference
the heart understands.

I wonder

if I was merely a room
you rested in

while waiting
for somewhere else to go.

A brief shelter.

A pause.

A season.

While you became

a country

I never fully left.

I tell myself
to let go.

But love does not leave
when it is told to.

It leaves

the way winter leaves.

Slowly.

Reluctantly.

With traces of itself
still hidden
in the soil.

So I carry you.

Not because I want to.                  
Not because I should.

But because some people
become part of your story

before you realize
they were only passing through.

And maybe healing

isn’t learning
how to forget you.

Maybe healing

is learning how to live

with the unfinished sentence

you left behind.

Jacque Michele