◢◤ ELYTJE◢◤ a confession to the universe, so everyone feels the weight of losing something irreplaceable I speak your name like a prayer. Elytje… Elytje… And the walls echo it back. But it is not you. It is only the sound of my own voice, bouncing off the emptiness you left behind. I move through the house, touching every place that still remembers you. The couch. The windowsill. The blanket. And everywhere my hand lands, there is a hollow, a silence, a space that no living thing can fill. Sometimes I swear I hear you. A soft pawstep in the kitchen. A faint meow from the hallway. A tiny warmth brushing my leg. But it is always a trick. A memory. A cruel echo of what was. The nights are endless. I lie awake and count the seconds, each one a tiny hammer in my chest. I imagine you curling beside me as you used to, and the ache is so deep I cannot breathe. I am suffocating in the shadow of your absence. People tell me, “Time heals.” They do not know. Time does not heal. Time stretches the pain across years, and each day is a new wound, because you are still not here. Because nothing will ever bring back your small, perfect life that fit so perfectly into mine. I am haunted. By the sound of your purr. By the weight of your trust. By the love that cannot die, even though you do. I weep not only for the life I lost with you, but for every quiet moment that will never be shared again. For every sunrise I will face alone. For every heartbeat that will not meet yours. And yet… in this unbearable grief, I still remember: Sixteen years of you were not enough. But they were everything. And I would choose them again, even knowing the pain that would follow. Because love this deep does not fade. It lingers. It hurts. It defines the spaces where joy used to live, and makes emptiness almost… sacred.