I don't remember when it started.
The silence.
The leaving.
The ache that never asks for attention,
but never stops asking to be felt.
People say time heals.
I think it just teaches you how to walk
while carrying everything you've buried.
Grief has no finish line.
It just learns to sit beside you,
uninvited,
unmoving.
I've lost more than names.
I've lost voices I used to hear every day.
Hands I used to hold.
Warmth I used to believe would stay.
And not all of them died,
some just left,
as if I was easy to unlove.
My father is a memory now.
So are my dogs.
So are the parts of me
that once believed the world could be soft.
And the worst part?
I keep trying.
I still open up,
still let people in,
even when the past keeps warning me not to.
But they always go.
Quietly.
Suddenly.
Like they were never here to begin with.
Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with me.
Other times I'm just too tired to wonder.
I laugh with people.
I listen.
I stay up helping everyone else heal,
but I come home to an empty inbox.
To a room that forgets I exist
the moment I close the door.
It's not just loneliness.
It's being unseen,
even when you're right in front of them.
It's realizing your absence
doesn't interrupt anyone's life but your own.
I've cried in the dark
so no one would have to carry it.
I've hidden so much pain
just to be easier to love.
And still, they leave.
Still,
they leave.
I wish I was cold.
Detached.
Untouched by it all.
But I'm not.
I'm soft.
I'm breaking and still offering my hands.
I'm hurting and still hoping someone
might choose to stay.
Even now,
I want to be seen.
Not for what I pretend to be,
but for all of it,
the mess,
the ache,
the heart that never stopped opening,
even when it kept getting torn apart.
If I am a story,
I am one no one finishes reading.
But I write myself anyway.
Just in case someone
ever wants to know how it ends.
