there is a lonely place
where your name still breathes
long after you stopped.

a place beyond missing,
beyond grief,
where love has nowhere left to go
and so it stays.

you were the soul of my soul,
the quiet inside my quiet,
the hand my spirit reached for
before i ever knew
i was reaching.

now the rooms feel larger.

the bed keeps your absence
pressed into one side.
the night stretches endlessly,
and even morning arrives
without knowing what to say.

sometimes i speak to you
as though death were only a door
you forgot to close behind you.

sometimes i swear
i feel you near—

in the sudden warmth of sunlight,
in a familiar song,
in the soft disturbance of air
beside me.

but then the moment passes,

and i am left
in that lonely place
between what was
and what can never be again.

still loving you.

still belonging to you
in some wordless way.

because when you died,
love didn’t die with you.

it simply lost its body

and learned
to live inside the lonely place.

Photo by Resat Kuleli on Unsplash