The Living Absence

Grief is not what people imagine.

It does not arrive in black clothing
or speak in a loud voice.

It moves quietly through the house
touching things that once belonged
to someone else.

A photograph in a drawer.
A name spoken by accident.
A small coat no one has thrown away.

The strange thing is this:

my child is not dead.

There is no grave.
No place to stand and say
here is where it ended.

Only distance.

A silence that grows larger
each year.

Sometimes I see a trace of them
in the world.

A name in print.
A face half remembered
in someone passing on the street.

For a moment the past returns
with terrible clarity.

Then it closes again.

People speak of closure
as if grief were a door
that could be shut.

But what we do not know
continues.

It gathers weight.

It lives beside us
like a second life
we cannot enter.

Once I held that child
as easily as breath.

Now I hold
only the outline

of a life that continues somewhere
without me.

And the mind, stubborn creature,
keeps asking the same question:

not where they are

but whether they ever think
of the person

who still remembers
their childhood

in exact detail.