Ashes of Yesterday

They told me time would heal all things,

but time is a liar with soft hands and cruel eyes.

It does not mend — it simply teaches you

how to carry broken pieces without bleeding too much.

I walk these hollow streets of memory,

each step an echo, each breath a sigh.

The lamplight flickers like a dying pulse,

and I wonder if it remembers you, too.

The sky forgets to be blue without you.

It drapes itself in heavy grays,

the color of unfinished letters

and apologies too late to matter.

I find you in the smallest sorrows:

in the chipped edge of a teacup,

in the abandoned book on the windowsill,

in the way the curtains flutter without music.

How easily the world goes on,

as if you were never here.

The birds still rise with the sun,

the rivers still murmur to the stones,

and laughter still cracks the surface of busy streets.

But you —

you are tucked away between heartbeats,

a note of music so faint only I can hear it.

I remember your hands —

weathered maps of kindness and toil,

your voice —

a song made of old stories and prayers,

your smile —

the last sunrise before a winter that never ended.

I have written your name into every sunset,

whispered it into the cracks of every crumbling wall,

buried it in every handful of dirt

that refused to grow flowers after you left.

Grief is a strange companion —

it doesn’t shout; it hums,

a low, ceaseless thrum beneath the noise of living.

It teaches you to smile with your mouth only,

to say "I'm fine" in twenty different dialects of silence.

I count the days like rosary beads,

each one slipping from my fingers,

slick with longing, heavy with the weight

of all the words I’ll never get to say.

Sometimes, I dream of you.

Not in grand gestures — no trumpets or divine reunions —

just simple things:

You tying your shoes.

You laughing at a joke only you understood.

You reaching out —

and then waking up to an empty room,

a hand outstretched to nothing.

I have built shrines in my mind to you,

temples made of "what-ifs" and "if-onlys,"

prayers stitched into the hem of every thought.

Some days, I forget.

For an hour. For a minute.

And then guilt rushes in,

a tidal wave of shame:

How dare I breathe so easily?

How dare I smile without you?

Other days, the forgetting is a mercy,

and I cling to it like a sinner to a last prayer.

They say you live on in memories —

but memories fade.

They say you live on in hearts —

but hearts break.

They say you live on in stories —

but stories end, too,

and sometimes the ink runs dry

before the story is done.

Tonight, the wind is kind.

It does not mock me with songs of yesterday.

It only hums low and steady,

rocking the trees like a mother cradling a grieving child.

Maybe you are in the wind.

Maybe you are the hush before the dawn.

Maybe you are the first star to blink open

when the sky forgets how to be anything but dark.

I do not know.

I will never know.

But tonight, I will leave the window open,

and if you are out there —

somewhere between the fading stars and forgotten prayers —

know that I am still here,

still breaking,

still waiting,

still loving you

in every shattered way I know how