Where You Left Me
I stand at the edge of your side of the bed, sunlight caught in the dust,
The world’s gone colorless, washed in grays and smudged trust.
Your hand, once so urgent and certain in mine, lies cold beneath the sheets,
The last of your warmth retreating, leaving nothing but the ghost of shared heartbeats.
Our room holds its breath, every shadow another version of you–
I catch your outline in the window, your echo in the closet, that secret smile I once knew.
Even the floorboards remember you, groaning out the steps you used to take,
While my own feet drag in patterns of denial, as if the right ritual could somehow make
You walk through the door, muttering about coffee, pretending nothing’s changed–
But this silence is surgical, clinical, carving out the space where your laughter once ranged.
Words abandoned me when you did, the clever speeches rehearsed for endings never came,
The only thing left was your absence, taut as a wire, burning your name.
Love is supposed to be a balm, but here it’s an infection,
The ache grows wild in your absence, a sick compulsion for self-dissection.
I find you everywhere in fragments: a pillow stained with your scent,
Notes in your handwriting, receipts in pockets, your old complaints still ferment.
Friends mutter about healing, about letting time do its work,
But grief is not a wound, it’s a parasite–gnawing, hungry, patient, and it never shirks.
Your laughter’s just a skipping record, your voice a song I can’t finish–
And every new day just thickens the grief I’m condemned to nourish.
I’m haunted by the mornings you woke before me, by the shape of your shoulder in dawn’s light,
The shared jokes, the code words, the arguments, the fucking, the fear and the delight.
Now, each morning is a negotiation: how long can I stay in bed before I have to admit
That you’re not coming back, that the world goes on, and none of it fits.
The coffee cools on the counter, another cup poured and untouched,
Neighbors nod in the hallway, their voices just noise, their sympathy too much.
I talk to the empty air as if you’ll answer, afraid of the day when I finally forget your sound,
I want to hate you for leaving, but you didn’t leave–you were taken, and I’m the one unbound
And flailing in the rooms where we planned impossible futures–children, travel, renovations,
Jokes about who’d go first, who’d die holding the other’s medications.
Each photograph is a curse; your smile dares me to remember,
The way you bit your lip, the way you mocked the cold of winter,
How we burned so hot beneath those old quilts, swearing spring would come fast,
But now all that’s left is this inertia, this icy mass–
The world moves, but I’m stuck in the orbit of your absence, frozen and raw,
Standing on the threshold of memories, gnawing old wounds until they’re nothing but scar.
I hear your keys in the door, but it’s only wind; I see your shadow at dusk, but it dissolves,
I replay your last breaths, the squeeze of your hand–every second unresolved.
Even the air tastes of mourning; even the sheets keep score,
I wake to the void where your body should be, and I always want more.
Time means nothing; calendars hang limp, hours lose meaning,
I watch the world outside as it keeps on careening.
Your shirts still hang, their smell slowly fading,
I sit in your chair, my whole body wading
Through all the plans we laid, the dreams we drafted in cheap notebooks,
Now just paper and ink, as useless as the comfort strangers cook
Into casseroles and cards I can’t bring myself to open–
Every attempt to move forward feels like a fraud, a promise broken.
I am numb where you left me, my heart a cracked relic,
Still loving you in ways that feel sick and angelic,
Still hearing your voice in the spaces where grief likes to feed,
Still tracing the outline of a future that can never proceed.
The world around me is loud and insistent–work, bills, calls, the news,
But I move through it all like a ghost, refusing to choose
Anything but this:
Standing exactly where you left me, in the hush of what never can be,
A monument to waiting, a living memorial to lost heat–
I loved you once, I love you still, and now the world has grown too still,
I am forever caught, frozen, where your absence and my longing meet.
You’re where the stars meet endless night,
You’re where my heart surrendered its fight.
I am marooned where you left me last–
Frozen here, out of time, forever chained to the past.
I loved you once, I love you still,
But now the world is silent, and always will.