Where the Love Goes When You’re Gone

"I Still Set the Table for Two"

I walk the same path every day, as if the pavement could somehow remember you. As if the cracked sidewalk could whisper your name back to me when the wind moves just right. I know you’re not here. I’ve known it for a long time now. But grief doesn’t operate on facts. It runs on feelings. And mine have never quite caught up with reality.

I still make two cups of coffee in the morning.

I still fold your side of the blanket.

I still hear your laugh when a song comes on, the one you used to sing off-key just to make me mad. It worked, you know. I used to roll my eyes, pretend I didn’t like it. Now I’d sell every piece of myself to hear it again.

You were my spring in the longest winter.

When you left, the cold came back. Not the kind that frostbites your fingers, but the kind that settles into your chest and never quite lets you breathe fully again.

They told me it would pass, that time would soften the edges of my sorrow. That one day, I would wake up and the ache would be gone. But they never said what to do with all the love I still have for you. They never told me what to do with the memories that sneak in at 2 AM like uninvited ghosts.

I still talk to you.

In the car. In the grocery store when I see your favorite brand of tea. In the quiet spaces of my day when no one’s watching. I ask how you’re doing. I tell you about the stupid things that happened at work. I pretend I hear your reply.

The truth is, I don’t want to let go.

Letting go feels like betrayal.

Because the love didn’t end when your heartbeat did. It just got heavier. Quieter. It turned into a silent companion I carry everywhere.

Sometimes I dream of you.

You’re sitting beside me in those dreams, exactly like before—barefoot, soft smile, hair a little messy, like you didn’t care how the world saw you because I saw you. Really saw you. And that was enough.

In those dreams, we don’t say much.

We just sit. And that’s enough too.

If spring could hear me, I’d beg it to bring you back.

Let the flowers bloom backwards, unravel the days, undo the moment everything changed. Let time collapse and rewrite itself.

But even the seasons are powerless to bring you home.

So instead, I write.

I write to keep you alive in pages and paragraphs.

I write so someone else who’s lost their you might feel a little less alone tonight.

I write because the only thing stronger than grief is love that refuses to disappear.

And love doesn’t disappear.

It stays. In the books you marked up. In the shirts I refuse to donate. In the silence between my breaths.

You were happiness in human form. You hid my dreams inside your heartbeat and made them safer than I ever could on my own. You were home.

And even if the world says I need to move on, I’ve chosen something else:

To keep loving you. Loudly. Boldly. Even in your absence.

Because happiness, for me, will always look like you—laughing, loving, living beside me, even if only in memory.

And until the day I see you again…

I’ll keep setting the table for two.