#quietgrief
They left me hanging
like an apostrophe
not quite belonging
to the sentence anymore,
yet still attached
to what abandoned me.
I remained there quietly,
a small curved ache
between what was said
and what was meant.
Because absence
is rarely clean.
It leaves fingerprints
on ordinary things:
half-finished conversations,
chairs facing empty rooms,
songs that continue playing
after the feeling has ended.
And perhaps that is the cruelty
of being left behind
not the leaving itself,
but the slow realization
that life continues grammatically
without you.
People still laugh.
Morning still arrives.
The world keeps arranging itself
into complete sentences
while you linger
like misplaced punctuation,
waiting to matter again.
I used to think closure
would sound dramatic
doors slamming,
voices breaking,
final words worthy of remembrance.
Instead,
it sounded like silence
becoming comfortable.
Like messages unanswered
long enough
to become history.
They left me hanging
like an apostrophe,
suspended between attachment
and disappearance.
Too present to forget,
too forgotten to keep.
And maybe that is what grief truly is:
a language continuing forward
while one part of it
remains stranded
between letters
that no longer reach for each other.
24/05/26
Ghana 🇬🇭
May 24
May 24, 2026 at 8:03 AM UTC
We talked the way people do
when they still care a little,
about everything light enough
to not ask for much.
Time slipped between replies—
not rude, not obvious—
just enough to teach me
how waiting changes shape.
With friends, it was quiet.
No fights.
No reasons worth explaining.
Just the slow widening of gaps
until silence grew teeth
and learned my name.
Family stayed close
the way chairs stay around a table—
plates passed,
questions answered,
calls made only
when the voice sounded urgent enough.
Care was there.
It just waited
until the problem
could be held in two hands
and shown.
I asked sometimes.
Not loudly. Not often.
Carefully—
like someone who already knows
the cost of asking twice.
Nothing ended dramatically.
That’s what made it heavier.
No goodbye.
No moment to point at.
Just time deciding
I wasn’t urgent.
I kept showing up the same—
same tone, same patience—
while the space around me
learned how to live
without expecting me.
I don’t feel angry anymore,
just tired in a quiet way—
the kind that comes from realizing
how normal it feels
to not be noticed.
Some people leave loudly.
Some stay halfway.
Some stay in the room
but forget to look back.
And somewhere in all of that,
I learned how to carry conversations alone—
until even that
went quiet.
Feb 3
Feb 3, 2026 at 2:35 PM UTC
i’m yours.
that’s the saddest part—
belonging without being chosen.
i look for comfort
where the hurt was born,
like returning to a house
that no longer knows my name.
you were my home.
now i knock,
and wait,
and wonder when love
started needing permission.
i don’t ask for love anymore.
i ask for space
that doesn’t feel like abandonment.
still, i stay—
not because it’s safe,
but because leaving hurts
in a way i already understand.
Dec 14, 2025
Dec 14, 2025 at 10:48 AM UTC
I could not
for the life of me
see anything
past eighteen.
Upon this earth
a terrible curse -
a true bane
of society.
Five years?
Pah -
The only hope I'd ever had,
was to be alive
in the end.
To see what lies
beyond the bend.
And so came
nineteen
...
and twenty
...
and now,
nearly thirty.
I am still looking
beyond the bend.
By the Gods,
Where does it end?
Jul 23, 2025
Jul 23, 2025 at 4:13 PM UTC
The matchbox
was hers—
bright red
with a tiger on it,
its head tilted
like it knew the ending.
One match left.
He kept it
in the drawer
beside loose buttons,
an eye drop bottle
half full,
a packet of salt
from a meal
they never finished.
He never lit it.
Not when
the bulb blew
above the stove.
Not when
monsoon took the power
three nights straight.
He’d reach—
then pause.
Then close the drawer
softly.
Until
the day
her number stopped ringing.
He struck it.
Once.
It flared—
brief, bright,
then gone.
The drawer
still smells
like her.
- THE END -
© 2025 June, Hasanur Rahman Shaikh.
All rights reserved.
Jun 5, 2025
Jun 5, 2025 at 10:48 PM UTC
Did you ever think of staying?
Or was leaving the only way
you knew how to love me?
Was I too much,
or not enough?
Did I ask for things
you couldn’t give,
or did you offer less
than you were able?
I wonder if you held back your truth
to protect me,
or to protect yourself
from watching me fall apart.
The answers don’t come.
But the questions—
they stay.
Lodged somewhere between
my ribs and my memory,
quiet,
persistent,
unanswered.
Apr 24, 2025
Apr 24, 2025 at 8:39 PM UTC
We said we’d never stop believing
in fairies,
in kindness,
in return phone calls.
We swore we’d never
become like them.
The adults
with milky eyes
and calendars
and knives
they only use for mail.
You said we’d grow up
but stay soft.
Like peaches.
Like lullabies.
You pulled your own tooth out
in second grade
just to see if the blood felt like something.
It didn’t.
But you didn’t say that out loud.
I held your hand
and told you it meant
you were brave.
You said the tooth fairy would bring you
everything you circled
in The American Girl Catalog.
You got two dollars
and a cavity.
Welcome to Earth.
I still have some of my baby teeth
rattling around in a film canister,
in the same box as my First Communion Dress
and my Princess Diana Beanie Baby.
I thought I was just saving pieces.
I never knew which parts of girlhood
were meant to be disposable.
As if saving them
meant I hadn’t lost
the rest.
Apr 24, 2025
Apr 24, 2025 at 9:58 AM UTC