There are small shoes by the door
that no one moves.
Dust settles softly on their toes
as if even the air
is afraid to disturb them.
Your laughter still lingers
in the corners of the ceiling,
caught in the light
that slips through the curtains each morning.
I wake expecting your footsteps
that quick, uneven rhythm
but the house answers with silence
too large for its walls.
Grief is a quiet thing.
It does not always wail.
Sometimes it sits beside me
at the edge of your bed,
fingers tracing the shapes of dinosaurs
on sheets that no longer wrinkle.
They say time is gentle.
They say it carries us forward.
But time, I have learned,
does not carry
it stretches.
It stretches the space between heartbeats,
between what was
and what will never be again.
I hold your name
like a fragile cup of water,
afraid that if I speak it too loudly
it will spill
and I will lose you twice.
The world continues
traffic lights change,
seasons turn their pages,
children grow taller in grocery store lines
and I stand still
in the season you left.
Yet love does not vanish.
It does not fold itself away
with your tiny clothes.
It expands
filling rooms,
filling lungs,
filling the sky I search each night
for a star brave enough
to feel like you.
There are small shoes by the door.
I leave them there.
Because love,
even in absence,
is still a place
you might find your way home to.