"I Left a Candle in Every Room You Haunted"

I didn’t know where else to put the grief, so I put it in candles.

One by one, I lit them — in every room you touched.

Every corner that still knew your breath.

Every place you forgot to say goodbye.

Some people bury their dead.

I leave flame trails for mine.

The first candle went in the kitchen.

Right beside the chipped blue mug — the one you never let me throw away, even when the handle cracked. “It has character,” you said. Now it holds dust and silence.

I light the wick and remember the mornings you hummed songs you didn’t know the words to. Always off-key. Always too early. But now the silence is worse. It's too exact, like the house is holding its breath.

The second candle sits on the windowsill in the living room, facing the oak tree you named “Margaret” for no reason at all. I asked once why you picked that name.

“Because it looks like a Margaret,” you replied, as if the answer were obvious.

Now Margaret is shedding leaves like it’s grieving, too.

The flame flickers every time the wind taps the glass, and I imagine you laughing at me — “Stop being so poetic, love. You're going to start writing sonnets to squirrels.”

Maybe I will. You're not here to roll your eyes.

The third candle burns in the hallway. That narrow stretch between the bedroom and the bathroom — the place we used to kiss in passing, as if we were too busy to stop and say I love you with words.

Do you remember the night we argued right there?

About something small. Something stupid.

I think it was laundry.

You stormed off.

But you came back minutes later with a laundry basket on your head, yelling, “Peace hat!”

I laughed so hard I forgot why I was mad.

The candle flickers. I hope it remembers that moment better than I do.

There’s a candle in the guest room, too.

You never liked that room.

You said it felt too cold, like a room waiting for someone who’d never arrive.

Now it’s warm with light.

Maybe ghosts visit when no one’s looking.

I placed two candles in the bedroom. One on each side of the bed.

Yours flickers more than mine.

I wonder if that means you're still here — restless, pacing through dreams you can't enter anymore.

Or maybe it's just the draft from the cracked window we never fixed.

Sometimes I lie awake and watch the shadows the flames make on the ceiling.

I imagine you there beside me.

Not saying anything. Just breathing.

Just being.

The weight of absence is strange.

It’s not the silence.

It’s the shape of it.

The attic was last.

I almost didn’t go up.

Too many boxes. Too many memories I never organized.

But I did.

I lit the candle in the farthest corner — beside the trunk where we kept our old letters, our photos, the silly paper crown from that New Year's you fell asleep at 10:30 PM.

I found a note there I don’t remember writing.

It just said: “Don’t forget how they smiled when the storm knocked the power out.”

I must’ve written that after that thunderstorm — the one that killed the lights for three days.

We played cards by candlelight and told stories like kids at camp.

Now I play solitaire with ghosts.

People ask if I’ve considered moving.

I nod. I lie.

But this house still smells like your shampoo in the hall closet.

Still creaks the same way you hated in winter.

Still holds your ghost in the way the floor groans when no one is walking.

Why would I leave?

You're everywhere here.

And nowhere.

Sometimes the candles burn too low, and I replace them.

Sometimes they burn out, and I don’t.

I’m not sure which rooms need light anymore.

Grief doesn’t send memos.

I dream of you often.

Not dramatic dreams — no last words, no white dresses or slow goodbyes.

Just simple things.

You making toast.

You swearing at crossword puzzles.

You dancing barefoot in the kitchen to a song you couldn’t name.

And always —

you look at me like I’m someone who’s still whole.

I don’t know if you’re a ghost, or just a memory with long legs.

I don’t care.

I light the candles anyway.

Tonight, I sat in the living room with only the candle burning.

Margaret's branches scratched at the window, and I swear I heard your laugh in the creak of the radiator.

I looked over.

The teacup in the kitchen had moved.

Just an inch.

But it moved.

I smiled. I didn’t speak. I didn’t need to.

Some things aren’t meant to be explained.

They’re just meant to be lit, and watched, and felt.

Like grief.

Like love.

Like the way your absence folds itself into every room —

and the way I answer,

with a single flame.