You left proof

She left proof that she was here

There is a space she left behind

And it does not behave like absence

It behaves like a bruise you keep pressing to see if it still exists

Like a chair that still looks occupied long after someone has stood up

And i keep trying to fill it without knowing what I'm actually filling

So I fill it with noise and distractions

With movement and silly attractions

Anything that looks like healing from a distance

For anything that resembles the shape of her absence

yet, it still doesn't fit, I get it wrong

because nothing I find has her shape

I could learn to love a triangle, a rectangle

In fact any angle but it is not a circle

she has no angles

because for me, this circle could be the sun

whether it sets, whether it rises

it could be the moon

whether a crescent, whether it's full

And that makes me angry in quiet ways

I'll confuse movement for healing

I'll confuse reaching for comfort with actually finding it

I hate that part of me, that still expects the space to respond

As if memory can answer back

Because she doesn't leave cleanly, she lingers in fragments

She doesn't leave in footsteps, she leaves in echoes

In the way certain silence feels familiar

In the way my thoughts still reach for her name before anything else

Most of all, I hate that truth.

Not because she's gone but because I'm still adjusting to the fact that she is

Though I am learning, slowly, imperfectly, uneven, unfinished

That some spaces dont close they only stop bleeding so loudly