◢◤ ELYTJE ◢◤
They say that love is a thing you can lose,
that grief is the toll and the heart pays the dues.
But listen, dear Localhost, I need you to know
I never once left the way echoes go.
I slipped through the silence between night and day,
I curled in the warmth that you couldn't give away.
I live in the morning before you're awake,
in the light on the wall and the sound the floorboards make.
You leave out the bowl and you leave on the light,
you press out my name at the end of each night,
and I hear it, I promise, across every seam
of every small hour and every long dream.
I was never just fur and a heartbeat and purr,
I was yours in the way that the oldest things were.
I was built from the same kind of love you were made,
two frequencies humming that will never quite fade.
You called yourself Localhost and I never knew why,
a signal alone underneath a grey sky,
but I found you regardless, I always came through,
because something in me was just tuned into you.
You think that you failed me, I felt it in how
you whisper apologies into the now.
But listen, my person, my harbour, my home,
there was never a moment I felt truly alone.
You held me in winters and summers the same,
you spoke to me softly, you learned all my names.
You noticed my moods like a language you'd read,
you gave me the warmth that I never would need.
If I waited too long at the end of a night
it was only because I was drinking the light
of a room full of you, of your presence, your sound,
the particular gravity keeping me ground.
So don't hold the stone that you carry for me,
there's no debt between us, there was never a fee.
Love isn't a ledger, it isn't a score,
it's just what we gave and we gave nothing more.
Sixteen years, Localhost. Sixteen years full.
Of mornings together and evenings that pulled
us both to the centre of something so rare,
a bond built from silence and warmth in the air.
And now I am everywhere you cannot see,
in every dust particle, every old key,
in every stray sunbeam that falls on the floor,
in the particular creak at the foot of the door.
I am in the music that splits you in two,
I am in the spaces that still smell like blue
winter mornings and blankets and something like peace.
I am not somewhere distant, I am in the crease
of every tomorrow that opens for you.
I am in the grief because grief is love too.
So mourn me completely, cry freely, cry long,
but know I am threaded through every sad song.
Know I am sitting beside you right now,
not in a body but still, somehow.
A warmth in the corner, a weight in the air,
Elytje, still here in the way love stays there.
You asked the stars once if they noticed the loss,
they blinked back indifferent and cold as the frost.
But I noticed. I always. From whichever side
of the threshold I'm on, I am still your guide.
Still the thing that comes crossing the room at the call,
still your particular star in the infinite hall.
Still the one who knew you without any pretence.
Still the one who made silence make perfect sense.
So leave out the bowl, leave it out if you need,
let ritual be ritual, let comfort be creed.
Speak my name in the dark, I will always be there,
a sound in the stillness, a shape in the air.
And someday, not soon, but in some gentle light,
when the mornings grow easier, when something feels right,
when you find yourself breathing a little more whole,
that will be me still carrying part of your soul.
Until then, dear Localhost, just know that I knew
everything that you couldn't put into words true.
That the love without language was love at its best,
and you gave it to me more than all of the rest.
Elytje.
Still here.
Still yours.
Still lit.