A Lover Named Grief

You come to me the way lovers do…

softly at first,

with no sound but the shift in the air,

the faint change in the room

that tells me I am no longer alone.

I feel you before I see you.

In the tightening beneath my ribs.

In the breath that catches

halfway between memory and prayer.

In the way the night leans closer

as if it, too, remembers your name.

You have always known how to find me.

In the stillness after midnight.

In the song that plays by accident.

In the scent of rain,

in the silence of an empty seat,

in the cruel tenderness of ordinary things.

You slip into me

like a hand finding one it once loved.

Familiar.

Uninvited.

Wanted anyway.

Some nights I mistake you for them.

The curve of their smile

in the mouth of a stranger.

Their laughter hidden

in someone else’s voice.

A shadow in the doorway

that, for one aching second,

looks like mercy.

But it is only you.

Pain.

Grief.

Love wearing mourning clothes.

And still,

I let you stay.

Because you are the closest thing

I have left to touch.

You lie beside me

in the hollow place where sleep should be,

your body made of memory,

your breath made of absence.

You kiss every wound

until it opens again.

You are cruel like that.

Tender enough to feel like devotion,

sharp enough to remind me

that what was lost

was once real.

There is something almost romantic

about the way you refuse to leave.

How faithfully you return.

How you circle back

through anniversaries and seasons,

through birthdays, songs, and old photographs,

as if to say:

I am what remains of love.

And perhaps you are.

Because what is grief

if not love

with nowhere left to land?

What is pain

if not the body’s way

of keeping someone near?

You are them.

You are the emptiness they left behind.

You are the version of me

that died with them

and keeps returning in pieces.

That is the triple meaning of you…

the one I lost,

the wound that stayed,

and the self still learning

how to live around both.

Sometimes I hate you

for how beautiful you can be.

How you turn tears

into something almost sacred.

How you make longing

feel like intimacy.

How you convince me

that suffering is a form of closeness.

But perhaps it is.

Perhaps every ache

is another way of saying

I loved deeply.

Perhaps every return

is proof

that love outlives the body.

So come back to me,

as you always do.

Meet me in the dark,

in the silence,

in the space between what was

and what still hurts.

Lie beside me

like the ghost of a promise.

I will not turn away.

Because somewhere between pain and devotion,

between absence and memory,

I have mistaken you for love…

and maybe, in some bittersweet way,

you are.