“You may forget the warmth he gave,
I will forget the light
When you have done pray, tell me
That I my thoughts may dim
Haste! lest while you’re lagging
I may remember him”
My mind woke up today before my body & everything felt too still, the minibar hummed low, the cars outside softened their engines, the light crawled in shyly, as though the whole world was tiptoeing around me, I deactivated my accounts again last night I already knew I wouldn’t survive seeing anything, eventually I got up slowly, the kettle boiled & I poured the tea, the same vanilla berry I make every morning, a ritual meant to anchor me but even my daily potion betrayed me today, my hands wrapped around the mug, but the warmth never reached me.
And I thought of you.
I always do.
But today however had a title & from the moment I opened my eyes I wondered what you were doing, were you getting dressed? laughing at something your best friend said while he fixed his tie? Were you checking your watch every two minutes the way you do when you’re nervous? did you think of me at all, even for a second? while they are dressing your hand in silver, while your fate announced a different future? While I am here, trying to forgive myself for building a kingdom of shadows at the edge of yours?
Where does one place a grief that does not belong to the light? No one died, no kingdom fell & yet the whole town is mourning anyway.
For days, I told myself it was nothing, that you were only a thought I carried when the world felt cold, but if you had asked, I would have broken every law, packed a bag & followed.
When I told you once so carelessly, as though it meant nothing that I didn’t want the house or the books or the slow evenings that grow into decades, it was a lie I thought I had to tell, I thought I was protecting myself, I know you knew. Maybe that was the cruelest part that you saw through me & allowed me to say it, stood on the other side, quiet, patient, almost waiting for me to be the one to blame.
I built a life around another version of myself that only existed in our world & that version mattered that’s the only thing I’m mourning today, I didn’t have to shrink or perform, I was softer, sometimes I even slept through the night, I was enough without shapeshifting, without translating myself into a friendlier dialect, without apologizing for the space I took.
And so that imagined life became my secret hideout, It was promised & it kept me alive on days when the world was sharp & cruel. And then came the message, so politely, now when I look back I think you did it out of fear, you used to tell me that no one could predict me, not even you & it scared you, it always did.
I told you good luck. Two words, the smallest, sharpest sentence I have ever written as if they could carry everything else, I couldn’t give you the confessions, the anger, the almosts because I’ve always been the better person.
If I were someone else, if I cared less, I might have walked into your day & set it all on fire with one sentence, one truth.
God knows I thought about it.
But I didn’t.
I won’t.
It still astonishes me that I never knew, People like to joke that I’d make a decent spy & yet I missed the obvious, Perhaps I didn’t want to see, Perhaps some part of me knew what waited if I looked too closely & chose blindness instead.
The mind is protective in its own ruthless ways & the truth lived in many ways didn’t it? but some truths are not meant for the light, they rot in silence, haunting only the ones who carry them & this one will be yours, to the grave, because I have my pens & I can bleed it out on the papers but you, you will carry it wordless, heavily, mouth sealed, forever.
And I don’t hate you, I don’t even wish you’d chosen differently, I only wish I hadn’t spent so long standing in airports or in a doorway, holding it open just in case, I wish I had learned sooner that you cannot build a home in the space between almost & not quite, I wish I had told the truth to you, or at least to myself, before the bells began.
So today I let myself grieve, I move through the house I built in my head & turn off lights one by one, close the books, wash the last cup, put it back on the shelf, water the garden one last time, strike a match & let what I made burn away.
And someday, when I’m sitting in a new room filled with real plants, books & stories of my own, I will not remember you or that house of shadows.
