“You Still Exist in My Mornings”

You Still Exist in My Mornings

By[Ali Rehman]

The alarm goes off at 6:45 a.m.

I hit snooze — twice.

You’d laugh if you saw that. You always said I treated alarms like negotiations.

Funny how even after you’re gone, I still argue with the silence.

I make coffee the way you taught me — two spoons, no sugar. You used to hum while it brewed, something soft and off-key, like an unfinished song.

Now, the kettle whistles for both of us.

The steam curls up like breath on cold glass.

I watch it fade and think: that’s how memories disappear — not suddenly, but slowly, turning invisible in the light.

Still, I whisper your name into the cup before taking the first sip.

It tastes a little like missing someone.

The mirror in the hallway still tilts slightly to the left.

You used to fix it every morning before work, saying,

“If I start the day crooked, the world follows.”

Now it stays crooked.

Maybe I want the world to follow your version of straight.

I brush my hair, button my shirt, and leave the house the same way I always did when you were here — except now, I don’t wait for your footsteps beside mine.

Still, I catch myself turning back at the door, like I’m waiting for you to say,

“Did you forget your keys again?”

I haven’t forgotten once since you left.

The street smells like rain.

It hasn’t rained.

But grief has a way of making everything smell like memory.

I pass the bakery where we used to stop for croissants — the flaky kind you’d eat messily, crumbs everywhere.

Once, I told you it was like eating with a snowstorm.

You laughed so hard coffee came out of your nose.

Now, when I walk past, the barista still smiles and asks,

“The usual for two?”

I just nod, take one cup, and pretend you’re running late.

At work, no one mentions your name anymore.

It’s as if silence has swallowed you whole.

But I still feel you between the minutes.

When the elevator stalls for a second — I think of the day we got stuck in it for forty minutes, passing time by making paper cranes from old receipts.

You said if we made a thousand, we’d be free.

We only made seventeen.

You said it was enough.

Sometimes, when the doors open, I still expect you to be there — smiling like it’s an inside joke we never finished.

Lunch comes, and I eat alone.

Not because I have to, but because the world feels too loud when I’m trying to remember the sound of your voice.

You used to say grief is love with nowhere to go.

But I think you were wrong — it goes everywhere.

It hides in coffee cups, window reflections, half-heard songs on the radio.

It lives in the pauses I still make, saving space for you to reply.

At 3 p.m., I water the office plant you gave me.

You said it needed “gentle sunlight and conversation.”

It’s still alive.

Maybe because I still talk to it.

“She’d be proud,”

I tell the leaves.

They don’t answer, but they lean toward the light like they know.

The sky turns golden as I walk home.

You always loved this hour — the soft glow that makes everything forgive itself.

I remember the evening we sat on the balcony, watching the world turn gold, and you whispered,

“If I ever leave before you, I’ll live in this light. Just look for me here.”

So I do.

Every day.

And every day, it hurts a little less — but it never stops.

The ache becomes a kind of music, background noise to everything I do.

Dinner is quiet.

The chair across from me holds a sweater you forgot to take.

Sometimes I talk to it.

Sometimes I just stare.

Afterward, I wash two plates, even though I only used one.

Habit is a ghost I can’t evict.

By night, I’m too tired to dream but too awake to forget.

I sit by the window and write small notes in my journal —

lines that sound like grocery lists but feel like confessions:

Buy milk.

Call Mom.

Stop checking their old photos.

You’re doing fine.

You’re still here.

Then I close it and set it beside your picture.

You look the same in every frame — caught mid-laugh, hair catching the light.

It’s unfair how still you’ve become while the world keeps moving.

And yet, every morning, without fail, you return.

In the moment the light slips past the curtains, I see your silhouette in the dust motes —

half memory, half miracle.

I feel you in the rhythm of my breath,

in the quiet ritual of coffee,

in the way I straighten my collar,

in the pause before I open the door.

You’re not gone.

You’re just rearranged —

woven into the fabric of every sunrise I wake to.

So yes —

you still exist in my mornings.

In the smell of coffee.

In the crooked mirror.

In the barista’s question.

In the space beside me on the sidewalk.

In the gold light that forgives everything.

You still exist —

not as someone I can touch,

but as the reason I keep moving forward.

Because love doesn’t die.

It just learns a quieter language.

And every morning, when I breathe,

I still speak it.