Morning came

The cruelest thing was that the world kept going.

Morning came

as though nothing had happened.

The kettle boiled.

Cars passed outside.

Someone laughed in the street,

and somewhere a woman complained about the rain.

I wanted to open the door and scream,

Don’t you know?

Don’t you know that someone is missing?

The sun had no business rising

on a world that no longer contained you.

But it did.

And I hated it for that.

I hated clocks for moving,

flowers for opening,

people for making plans for next Tuesday

as though next Tuesday mattered anymore.

At first,

I thought grief would be loud.

I thought it would live in funerals

and black clothes

and photographs held against my chest.

But grief is quieter than that.

It is reaching for my phone

because something happened

that only you would understand.

It is buying too much milk.

It is hearing a joke

and saving it for you

for half a second

before remembering.

It is finding one of your hairs

caught in the fibres of an old coat

and standing perfectly still

because suddenly

it is the most precious thing I own.

People told me

that eventually I would learn to let you go.

I haven't.

I have learned to carry you differently.

There is a difference.

You no longer walk beside me,

but you are there

when I say something exactly as you would have said it.

You are there

when an old song begins.

You are there in stories

I have told a hundred times

and will tell a hundred more

because speaking your name

is one small way

of refusing to let death have everything.

And perhaps that is what grief becomes.

Not forgetting.

Not moving on.

Just learning how to live

in a world that kept going

when you could not.

So I go with it.

Morning comes.

The kettle boils.

Cars pass outside.

And somehow,

impossibly,

I keep going too.

Carrying enough love for both of us.