It rarely arrives
in a single moment,
it gathers in corners,
in unsaid things,
in nights spent
turned the other way,
in coffee gone cold
while silence fills the room,
in laughter you no longer reach for,
in the twitch of a finger
reaching for a wedding band
that isn’t there,
just skin now,
and the echo of a promise.
it settles in the pause
before your name is spoken,
in the hollow of a drawer
still holding the note I wrote you in 2015
in the way light filters in,
but doesn't quite warm
the space they used to fill.
grief is not the breaking,
it's the habit
of touching absence.