Of Envisaged Echoes

I am not grieving you anymore—
not the way your hands once knew my name.
I have learned the shape of goodbye,
set it gently on the shelf
where truths are kept.

What aches is the future
we never reached.

The quiet house we planned with laughter,
the mornings folded into shared routines,
the ordinary miracles
we thought were guaranteed
simply because we believed hard enough.

I hear your voice in every song—
not because I want to,
but because memory hums
even when the music has faded.

I see you in the dishes I cook,
in the way I still season food
as if you might taste it,
as if love were an ingredient
that never expires.

At night, when the world is unguarded,
you visit my dreams—
not as a wound,
but as a ghost of intention,
a maybe that once felt solid.

I am not waiting for you.
Not anymore.
I know we are not returning
to what we were.

But I am learning how to loosen my grip
on who I thought we would become.

This grief is quieter now—
less storm, more tide.
It comes and goes,
takes a little less each time.

I know it will pass.
I don’t know when.
And for the first time,
I am not afraid of that.

I let these envisaged echoes linger,
for now—
not as chains,
but as proof
that I once loved deeply,
and survived the loving.

And that, too,
is a future I never imagined,
but one I am slowly
learning to live.