Skyward

I keep a journal no one will ever see.

It smells of rainwater and coffee grounds,

and every page carries a heartbeat.

I began it on the day my sister stopped answering the moon.



I. The Night of Quiet Thunder

The night she left, the world forgot how to breathe.

Streetlights blinked like tired eyes.

Our mother’s hands trembled over an empty teacup,

and silence pooled in the corners of the house

like rainwater without a drain.

I opened my window and asked the sky a question.

It replied with a low, aching rumble of thunder—

not a storm, just a sound that said I know.

Her absence was not a disappearance;

it was a hollow echo that followed me from room to room,

a soft knock that never reached the door.



II. Rooms Without Her

Morning arrived colorless.

The hallway smelled of damp cedar,

the scent she loved most.

I lingered by her bedroom door,

listening for a breath that never came.

The walls held her laughter like faint perfume.

Even the floorboards creaked with hesitation,

as though they feared breaking the spell of memory.

Neighbors brought casseroles and condolences,

words wrapped in plastic wrap,

but nothing tasted like comfort.

Grief has no recipe.

III. Footprints of Memory

She loved to write her name in places where no one else would look—

the underside of the attic beam,

the back of a grocery receipt,

the damp sand just before the tide pulled in.

I found those secret signatures like breadcrumbs.

Each one whispered, I was here. I am still here.

And yet the air refused to warm.

I wore her old scarf even in summer.

Its frayed edges scratched my neck,

but it smelled faintly of cedar and late-night laughter.

People asked if I was cold.

I never told them it was my shield against forgetting.



IV. Conversations with the Wind

Days stretched thin and translucent.

I walked the river trail where we once chased dragonflies,

where she used to say the wind knew all our secrets.

“Tell me,” I asked the wind,

“where do lost voices go?”

The breeze lifted a strand of hair across my cheek.

For a heartbeat, it felt like an answer.

Sometimes I swore I heard her humming

in the rattle of cattails,

a tune both near and impossible.

I closed my eyes and let the sound

thread itself through the quiet parts of me.



V. The Letter I Never Sent

In my journal I wrote her a letter:

You are a map drawn in disappearing ink.

I keep tracing roads that fade beneath my fingertips.

If you can read this, send me a sign—

not lightning, not stars, just something small.

I left the page unfinished,

as if a period might close the door for good.

That night I dreamed of her.

She stood on a shoreline of white sand,

her back to me,

hair lifted by a wind I could not feel.

When she turned, her eyes were filled with sky.

I woke with the taste of salt on my lips.



VI. The Sky Remembers

Autumn arrived dressed in copper light.

One evening I climbed the old hill

where we once dared each other

to shout our dreams at the horizon.

The clouds were violet bruises against a burning sun.

I whispered her name—first like a secret, then like a prayer—

until it was the only word the earth could hear.

A single feather drifted down.

White, soft, weightless.

It landed in my palm as if guided.

I am not someone who believes in miracles,

but I believed in her.

I still do.



VII. Becoming the Echo

I walk different now.

Slower. Listening.

Each step a syllable,

each breath a small poem.

People think poetry is built of rhymes and clever lines.

I know it is built of absences,

of spaces where someone once stood.

Some evenings I sit on the porch

and read aloud to the night—

her favorite poems,

my clumsy attempts at new ones.

The dark listens.

Sometimes an owl calls back,

and I imagine she has borrowed its voice.



VIII. Small Acts of Remembering

I plant wildflowers in unexpected places:

between sidewalk cracks,

along the fence where neighbors will see color

without knowing why.

Each blossom is a quiet celebration,

a reminder that beauty returns even after frost.

Children in the neighborhood ask why I talk to the wind.

I tell them it carries messages faster than phones.

They giggle, but they start to whisper to the air, too.

Perhaps every whisper finds its way.

I’ve learned that grief is not a wall—

it’s a door that never closes fully.

You pass through again and again,

each time carrying a little more light.



IX. The Last Page

Tonight, as rain taps against my window—

gentle, patient, alive—

I set the journal on the sill.

Outside, the night inhales.

Clouds drift like slow-moving ships.

Somewhere beyond sight,

a sister laughs with the stars.

I whisper,

“The sky learned my name because you taught it.”

The thunder answers softly,

and for the first time in months,

I feel the world exhale.

I leave the journal open,

ink drying in the damp air.

Not a period.

A pause.

Enough space for her to write back.