◢◤ ELYTJE ◢◤ so the world will understand what silence can do to a heart The days began to blend. Morning light spilled into rooms that no longer had you in them. The sun didn’t care that something sacred had broken. It just kept rising, indifferent, painting golden light over the place where you once slept. Your bowl is still in the kitchen. Empty. I walk past it like a ghost. Sometimes I catch myself pausing, expecting to hear that tiny sound the soft rhythm of you padding across the floor. But there is nothing. Only air. Night is the hardest. That’s when the world stops pretending. That’s when the house remembers. Every shadow looks like you for a split second. Every breeze sounds like the sigh you’d make when settling down beside me. And for that split second, my heart leaps then crashes, heavier each time. People talk. They say kind things, but their words slide off me. They don’t see the way the absence sits in my chest, like a stone that will not dissolve. They don’t understand that grief isn’t a single moment. It’s a repetition. It’s waking up every day to the same empty space, and loving anyway. I used to talk to you without thinking. Now I still do, but the replies are echoes in my own head. And somehow, that hurts even more. Sometimes I catch myself reaching out my hand in the dark. My fingers close around nothing. And that nothing is colder than anything I’ve ever known. Sixteen years were full. This part is not. It is quiet, and long, and unfinished. It is me, learning to breathe around the shape of you.