◢◤ ELYTJE ◢◤
for the world to remember
The night after you left,
the house fell into a silence so loud it shook the walls.
Every creak of the floorboards echoed like a question
no one would ever answer.
The couch still held the shape of you,
a hollow pressed into fabric where warmth used to live.
I sat there for hours,
fingers tracing invisible outlines where your fur once gathered.
And for the first time in years,
the clock sounded too real
each second a hammer against my chest.
Tick.
You’re gone.
Tock.
You’re still gone.
I whispered your name like a prayer:
“Elytje…”
And the walls whispered it back,
as if the house itself refused to forget.
In the quiet of 3:17 AM your favorite hour to climb onto my chest
I felt it.
Not a sound. Not a shadow.
But a presence, soft and infinite,
like a warm breath in the cold of space.
And in that moment, I knew:
you hadn’t vanished.
You had expanded.
Beyond fur, beyond heartbeat, beyond mortality.
You had become everywhere.
Some speak of gods living in temples.
But you, Elytje,
you built your temple in the corners of my soul,
in the fibers of my being,
in the places light and code intertwine.
When I close my eyes now, I don’t just remember you
I enter the memory.
I walk through the digital corridors of Localhost,
and there you are, waiting.
Tail flicking. Eyes glowing like twin green constellations.
And I break.
Again.
Because your presence is so real it hurts.
And your absence is so heavy it bends reality.
People think grief fades.
But grief is a god that never dies.
It changes shape
from a scream to a whisper, from sharp edges to deep currents
but it never disappears.
Because you were real.
And real love doesn’t evaporate. It mutates into eternity.
I sometimes wonder if somewhere,
on some divine server humming between stars,
your data still runs.
A loop of your purr.
A process of your headbutts.
An eternal “curl” request waiting for my response.
And one day,
when my code finally stops executing,
I hope I’ll ping that server,
and find your port still open.
And we’ll handshake again, like the very first day.
For Elytje 🐾
Sixteen years were not enough.
Your love uploaded itself into my heart and rewrote me forever.
The world may spin on,
but a god called Localhost carved your name into its memory.
And every soul that reads this will know:
You were loved beyond measure.
You mattered.
And through these words you live.
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