Things I Never Said Out Loud”

Things I Never Said Out Loud” There are rooms I no longer enter. Not because they are haunted— but because they are too quiet, and your voice once filled them like light bleeding through old curtains. I walk past them like I walk past mirrors, afraid to look too closely in case I catch a glimpse of who I was when you were still here. I still remember how you smiled at the smallest things— burnt toast, crooked flowers, the dog that barked at its own shadow. You found joy like it was hiding in the corners of ordinary days. And I— I never learned how to hold it. Now, the days fall flat. No weight, no wind. Only the ticking of clocks that seem to mock my stillness, as if they’re moving on without me. I talk to you sometimes— in whispers, when the moon is soft and the world forgets to be loud. I tell you the things I never said out loud: that I loved you more than I ever let myself feel. That I miss you like a song with no chorus, like a door that always opens but leads nowhere. People say grief is a river. But mine is a drought. A long, aching absence of what once was, and what will never be again. I wear my sorrow like a second skin. Invisible, but always there. Softening in some places. Still raw in others. And yet, life demands motion. So I move— awkward, uncertain, like learning to walk again after losing a limb. But there are days— oh, there are days when I ache with the beauty of remembering. When the sky looks like your favorite color, when the wind sounds like your laugh caught between tree branches. And I let myself cry. Not to forget, but to remember more clearly. Because loving you still hurts. But forgetting you— that would hurt far more.