◢◤ Elytje ◢◤
There is a grief that does not howl or break,
that does not shatter glass or stay awake
screaming at the ceiling, wild and raw.
It simply sits beside you in the ordinary flaw
of Tuesday afternoons that used to mean nothing,
in the pour of a cup, the kettle's small sing,
in the coat I still hang on the hook by the door,
in all the small rituals I cannot restore.
They told me grief comes in waves, and that is true,
but they forgot to mention the undertow too,
the quiet pull beneath the calm of a day
that drags you under when you think you are okay.
When a slant of light falls on the floor just so,
at the angle it used to fall on your fur below,
and you are gone again, and I am undone,
by light, by a Tuesday, by nothing, by one
small ordinary moment that wears your face,
and I am standing holding nothing in the empty space.
Elytje.
The word has changed inside my mouth with time.
It used to be a call, a summons, small and fine,
a sound that meant come here, I need you, I am home.
Now it is something closer to a prayer, alone,
a name pressed outward into the dark of rooms
not expecting an answer, expecting only the perfume
of what you were, still caught inside these walls,
the ghost of you still moving through these halls.
You were the first thing that ever loved me whole,
without conditions set upon my soul,
without a contract, clause, or caveat.
You loved me plainly. You were simply that.
You arrived in my life the way a fact arrives,
the way that gravity does, the way morning survives
even the worst nights. And you stayed, you stayed
with a faithfulness no human hand has made.
Sixteen years of your weight warm in my lap,
of your breath on my wrist, of the small soft tap
of your paws across the floor coming toward me,
that sound, that sound, I would give all I own to see
just once more. Just the sound of you choosing me still.
Just the soft percussion of your crossing, that small thrill
of being wanted by something wordless and pure.
I did not know then what I know now for sure.
I think about what you saw that I could not find
inside myself, the thing behind the blind
and frightened face I wore through the worst nights,
the ones that had a weight to them, a darkness without lights,
the ones I do not speak of, even now.
You stayed. You did not ask me why or how.
You pressed your small skull against my trembling hand
as though you had been given a quiet command,
as though something older and wiser than us both
had whispered to you simply: stay. And you kept that oath.
Elytje.
I did not know until the shape of you was gone
that absence has dimensions, that it carries on
the weight of you, the warmth, the sound, the smell.
I did not know that grief would feel like this, this well
that has no bottom, that just holds your name
like water holds the light. I am not the same.
And I was not the only one who kept the other near.
You were keeping me here too. You kept me here.
We were holding each other through the years that passed,
through the mornings that were hard and the nights that massed
at the edges of the room like something waiting,
and always you were there, simply and quietly stating,
without a word, without a sound but your own weight,
that I was worth remaining for. That I was not too late.
That something small and breathing chose to call me home.
I needed that more than you knew. I was so alone.
So here is what I want to say before the silence wins,
before the grief outlasts the words and everything begins
to blur again the way it does when feeling goes too deep.
Thank you. For the mornings. For the years you chose to keep
your small warm faith in me when I had none myself.
Thank you for the weight of you, left like a book on a shelf
inside my chest, something I return to, something real.
Thank you for the proof of what a quiet love can heal.
Thank you for not needing me to be more than I was
before you looked at me and loved me just because.
The bowl is still there.
The light is still on.
And somewhere between the silence and the stars,
between the end of words and all that still remains,
you are still crossing the floor toward me.
And I am still here.
Still warm.
Still yours.
Elytje.