When Goodbyes Refuse to End

Goodbye is supposed to be simple.

A word, a nod, a closing of the door.

It should sound like footsteps fading

and the hush of silence that comes

after someone leaves a room.

But you—

you never left cleanly.

You linger like perfume

woven into the seams of a sweater,

like dust dancing in the golden slant of evening light,

like a ghost that doesn’t believe in walls.

I try to pack you away,

the way I fold old letters

into shoeboxes that no longer fit their purpose.

I try to tape them shut,

stack them in the attic of my mind,

and tell myself they are forgotten.

But memories leak through cardboard,

ink bleeds,

and even silence hums with your name.

Every morning feels like the day after you left.

The bed remembers your weight.

The kitchen remembers your laughter.

The mirror remembers the way

I smiled differently when you stood behind me.

And every night,

the darkness reminds me

that you have not finished leaving.

Some goodbyes are sharp.

They cut once, cleanly,

and the wound, though deep,

knows how to heal.

But ours—

ours is a slow unraveling.

A thread that snaps,

but then tangles itself around my fingers,

so I cannot move without feeling the pull.

I walk down streets

where strangers wear your posture,

your gait, your half-turned glance,

and for a second,

the world folds itself

into the shape of you.

I hear your voice in passing radios,

in the scrape of chairs across a café floor,

in the laughter of people

who have no idea

that they are carrying pieces of your echo.

How cruel,

that goodbye is never final

when the heart keeps listening.

I tell myself I’m strong,

that I can box up grief

and label it “yesterday.”

But grief is clever.

It hides in the smallest corners,

behind the sound of rain against the window,

beneath the hush of pages turning in a book.

And just when I start to breathe freely,

it taps me on the shoulder

and whispers,

“I’m still here.”

And I answer,

“Yes. I know.”

Because part of me

doesn’t want the goodbye to end.

Part of me

clings to the ache

like it is proof

that what we had was real.

Pain is a terrible monument,

but it stands tall,

and sometimes it’s the only evidence left

that love once lived here.

So I wander between letting go

and holding on,

between wanting peace

and fearing emptiness.

I write your name on paper,

then cross it out,

then write it again.

I promise myself closure,

but I open the window wide,

hoping the night breeze

might carry your shadow back to me.

Autumn comes,

and the leaves fall like broken promises.

Winter follows,

laying its silence heavy across the earth.

Even spring,

with its blossoms and beginnings,

cannot erase you—

for I see your smile in the flowers

and your voice in the rivers

that will not stop running.

Time is not a healer,

it is a mirror—

it shows me how I look without you,

and sometimes the reflection

is too unbearable to face.

And yet,

I keep walking.

One step,

another,

then another.

Because even when goodbyes refuse to end,

life insists on beginning again.

New mornings arrive,

uncertain but insistent.

And maybe one day,

I will learn to greet them

without searching for your face

in the horizon’s first light.

Perhaps healing is not forgetting,

but learning to carry absence

as though it were another form of presence.

Perhaps love never leaves—

it simply changes shape,

hiding itself in the corners of who we become.

Still, I ache.

I ache in the hollow of my hands,

in the empty seat beside me,

in the spaces where laughter once lived.

I ache in the pauses of music,

in the silence between words,

in the echo of promises

that never learned to rest.

And yet—

I also give thanks.

For even in your leaving,

you taught me the depth of my own heart.

You showed me how love lingers,

how memory endures,

how even brokenness

can carry its own strange beauty.

So tonight,

let me linger here,

in this half-finished farewell,

where you still breathe

inside my memory.

Let me confess one last truth:

It was never just a goodbye.

It was every heartbeat that still remembers you,

every silence that still speaks your name,

every tear that still tastes

like yesterday’s promise.

Goodbye should have been simple.

But you—

you turned it into a story

with no final page.

And so I keep reading,

over and over,

the words etched into my chest,

the ending that refuses to come.

Because when goodbyes refuse to end,

love lingers in the margins,

and memory becomes a kind of forever.

writing by brook