The Shape Changed

I used to think
healing would arrive
as absence

that one morning
I would wake up
and your name
would no longer live
inside my body
like a second pulse

but that isn’t what happened

instead—

life grew
around the missing piece

like roots
learning the shape
of a stone

and I moved with it

I learned how to
stop shrinking myself
for fragments of you

how to let the nights pass
without turning grief
into ritual

I learned
that survival
is embarrassingly ordinary

I still have so many
I wish I could tell you

I still carry you
into rooms
you will never enter

and somehow—

I continue

the heart is not noble

it does not understand endings
just because the mind does

mine still reaches for you
in small unconscious ways

still chooses you
without permission

and maybe it always will

but love—

real love—

I don’t think it disappears
simply because it has nowhere to go

I think sometimes
it just changes shape

becomes quieter

less like fire
more like gravity

less like possession
more like recognition

I loved you

I love you

and perhaps
some part of me
always will

not in the aching way
that once hollowed me out

not in the desperate way
that confused longing
for hope

just—

in the way
you love a city
you no longer live in

a place that changed you
completely
even after you learned
you could not stay

JMS