It rarely arrives
in a single moment,
it gathers in corners,

in unsaid things,

in nights spent

turned the other way,


in coffee gone cold

while silence fills the room,

in laughter you no longer reach for,

in the twitch of a finger
reaching for a wedding band

that isn’t there,
just skin now,

and the echo of a promise.

it settles in the pause

before your name is spoken,
in the hollow of a drawer

still holding the note I wrote you in 2015
in the way light filters in,
but doesn't quite warm
the space they used to fill.

grief is not the breaking,

it's the habit
of touching absence.