When I’m Gone, and You’re Still Here

I do not speak it.

Not at breakfast, not when you're laughing,

not when your hair catches the morning sun

like a halo I want to seal around you forever.

But it lives behind my teeth,

a sharp and silent thing.

I am afraid.

Terrified in ways I have no words for.

Not of dying—

but of leaving you

in this world

that is unraveling,

thread by thread,

kindness by kindness.

You won’t hear me say it.

Not when I tuck you in.

Not when I pack your lunch with an extra cookie.

But every gesture is a scream I’ve trained to whisper:

How will you survive without me?

The news flickers like firelight—

a war here, a flood there,

oceans rising,

people breaking.

And I swallow my panic

so you can still dance in the kitchen.

But what if you have to run one day?

What if you go hungry?

What if fear becomes your pillow,

and no arms are left to gather you back into safety?

You will never know how I lie awake,

watching shadows move across the ceiling

like omens.

You will never know how much I pray

not to outlive my usefulness—

not to leave you to wolves

dressed as leaders,

to skies that burn,

to silence that swallows too many names.

I want to build a world around you

that is gentler than this one,

but my hands are too small

and my time too short.

So I teach you how to hold each other.

How to listen.

How to speak truth even when it shakes.

Because I will not always be here.

But maybe—

maybe the love I leave in you

will be a weapon against the dark.

Maybe that is the one thing

they can never take.