Grieving the Living
You found me like a wildfire finds dry grass,
all heat and wonder, impossible to ignore.
In the beginning, I was the moon in your sky,
the name on your lips,
the place your attention always returned to.
You called it love.
I called it destiny.
But somewhere between devotion and possession,
I misplaced pieces of myself.
You traced my footsteps so closely
that eventually I forgot how my own path sounded.
Most nights I couldn’t even recognize the woman
staring back at me from the mirror.
You took from my heart
the way a great grizzly steals honey—
gentle-looking, powerful, unapologetic.
And foolishly, beautifully,
I almost let you consume me whole.
Then something larger than either of us arrived.
God, fate, the universe—
some boundless lion with golden eyes—
and tore us apart with a roar
neither of us could outrun.
Still, separation is not freedom.
Because now I carry your ghost everywhere.
I don’t know how to live
without reaching for a hand that isn’t there.
I don’t know how to stop loving
the version of you that lived inside my dreams.
The memories ache.
Not because they were perfect,
but because they were real to me.
Love twisted by reality,
bent out of shape,
mangled at its center,
yet somehow still beating.
I love you.
I hate you.
And some days those two truths
sit side by side like old friends
watching the sunset in silence.
People talk about grieving the dead.
Nobody tells you how to grieve the living.
How to bury a future
while the person still walks this earth.
How to miss someone
who is still breathing beneath the same stars.
I saw galaxies in you.
Entire worlds waiting to be born.
And while I was busy gathering bricks
to help build your kingdom,
you were quietly teaching me
how small you thought I was.
Now look at you.
Cool guy.
You got everything you wanted.
The admiration.
The image.
The crown.
And here I am,
holding the echoes of a love
that never learned how to stay gentle.
But if there is one thing you could never take,
it is this:
I survived.
The honey is still sweet.
The lion still watches.
And the pieces of myself I lost in loving you
are finding their way home,
one aching memory at a time.
