What I Carried After You

Grief doesn’t leave.

It shifts its weight,

climbs into your throat,

and learns to sleep beside your breathing.

I packed away your letters.

Burned the shirts I couldn’t stop smelling.

Traded pain for poetry,

and silence for the sound

of coffee boiling alone.

Some mornings, I still expect

your name to blink on my phone

like it never stopped trying.

They said,

“Let time do its work.”

But time just learned to hum quietly

while I drown in all the things

you left unsaid.

I’ve screamed into pillows.

Swallowed months like broken glass.

But I am still here.

And here’s the line I never forgot—

"I didn't survive you to become someone else."

I say it aloud

when I’m about to give up,

when I remember the good,

when I forgive myself for forgetting.

Not everything we lose

was meant to go.

But I stayed.

And I made a home

out of the wreckage.

_______

The sentence is:

"I didn't survive you to become someone else."