They tell you grief comes in stages
like a hospital elevator
that stops neatly on each floor.
Bullshit.
Grief is a code blue at 3:17 a.m.
when the hallway smells like bleach and burnt coffee
and nobody makes eye contact
because we all know
who didn’t make it through the night.
I lost you
and the world didn’t even flinch.
The sun clocked in on time.
Birds kept their tiny schedules.
Some kid laughed in the parking lot
and I wanted to scream
how dare you still be alive like that.
I keep finding you in dumb places—
the wrong side of the bed,
a song I hate now,
the way my phone lights up
and doesn’t say your name.
That’s the cruelest miracle:
memory doesn’t need permission.
It just shows up
like a doctor who’s already taken off the gloves.
I loved you in ways I never learned how to say out loud.
Loved you with half-finished sentences,
with jokes that only worked if you were listening,
with a future I assumed would just… wait for us.
Now I talk to you in my head
like you’re late, not gone.
Like maybe traffic got bad
between here and whatever comes next.
They say time heals.
What it really does
is teach you how to walk
with a hole in your chest
without bleeding on strangers.
Some nights I’m brave.
Some nights I bargain with God
like He still takes calls from people like me.
Some nights I just sit on the floor
and let the quiet say your name
over
and over
and over.
If love is supposed to save us,
explain this.
Explain why losing you
feels like surviving something
I didn’t want to win.
I’m still here.
That’s the part I don’t know how to forgive yet.