After

They will not know it at first.

Not during the argument.
Not while they repeat their reasons
to one another.

Understanding arrives slowly.

One day something small is missing—
a sound at the table,
a voice that settled the room.

They will notice the space
only after they have arranged
their lives without me.

They will call it loss.

But loss is the wrong word.
Loss suggests accident.

This was chosen.

They will speak carefully about it.
They will explain themselves.

Every explanation
will feel thin in their hands.

Later, in some quiet room,
they will find a photograph,
a book with notes in the margin.

They will wonder
why these objects
make them uneasy.

Regret does not announce itself.

It enters like dampness.
It spreads quietly through the beams.

By the time it is recognized
something essential
has already changed.

Kindnesses once dismissed
return with a different weight.

They will say my name again.

Not easily.

But I will not hear them.

I have gone elsewhere.

Not far—
only into a life
where the air is simpler.

Morning comes there
without accusation.

The work of living continues.

Seeds take root in the ground
without asking permission.

What grows now
belongs to me.

Let them remember.

Memory is its own discipline.

As for me,

I walk forward

under the same sky
that looked down on all of us,

the wind moving freely across it,

the rain falling
without preference,

the stars—
indifferent witnesses—

keeping their distance.