This Is How I Remember It

This is how I remember it:

not with clarity,

but with color —

a bleeding watercolor afternoon,

sunlight slanting through broken blinds,

dust caught midair like waiting thoughts.

You were humming something

low and familiar,

your voice just shy of a whisper

as if singing might wake the grief.

The smell of rain drifted in through the window.

And I remember the way your hands looked—

like they’d held too many days

and hadn’t let go of any.

You sat at the kitchen table,

coffee gone cold,

staring into it like it owed you answers.

Your fingers tapped the ceramic edge

to some rhythm I never knew,

like a language lost

when the world turned quiet.

I didn’t ask what was wrong.

I never did.

We were a family of silences.

Love, in our house,

was handed over like folded laundry—

necessary, warm,

but never spoken.

I remember the photo on the fridge.

The one where we’re smiling at something

just out of frame.

We never did remember what.

But that smile…

that smile hung on for years,

even after the frame cracked,

even after we didn’t.

There was that one night—

you said you were going for a drive,

just a drive,

but you didn’t take your keys.

You took your coat and the letter

folded three times like regret.

I waited on the porch

until the stars forgot me.

Until even the dog gave up.

And when you came back

your eyes were red

and your voice was a locked door.

And that was the night

I learned grief doesn’t always need a body.

This is how I remember it:

all the unspoken things.

The pause between your sentences.

The way your footsteps slowed

when you reached my door

but never knocked.

How you left the light on in the hallway,

even when you couldn’t face me.

Years later, I find you

in the way I stir my tea.

In the radio static during thunderstorms.

In the middle drawer,

where I still keep your pen.

It doesn’t work.

I still can’t throw it away.

This is how I remember it:

Not perfectly.

Not kindly.

But honestly.

You weren’t a saint.

But you stayed.

When everything inside you wanted to vanish,

you stayed.

And now you're gone,

but somehow still here—

in the angle of the morning light,

in the sigh of a closing door,

in the parts of me

that never learned how to forget you.