the streetlights hum low tonight, like they know something i don’t,
i watch the smoke curl out of someone else’s window
and i think about how quiet it will be
when someone i love disappears—
not just leaves, not just goes,
but folds into the earth like paper in water,
and i am left with the echo of their laughter
trapped in my teeth, in my chest,
in the clatter of dishes i will never clean with them again.

i remember the smell of rain on their skin once
and now i remember it only in memory
and memory tastes like copper
like the first time i saw my mother cry
and wondered if she had swallowed the world whole.

death isn’t dramatic, not really—
it’s a slow conversation that you miss until it ends
and then you are alone with the words
that were never said,
the apologies you never made,
the songs you never learned to sing to them.

i hear crickets in the yard,
i imagine they are tiny funeral singers
and i close my eyes,
letting the dark crawl up my spine
and thinking—maybe this is how the world keeps going
even after the ones we love
have stopped being ours.