The Year After

The first year after someone dies is a minefield of ordinary things. Their coffee mug. Their side of the bed. The song that plays in the grocery store like a sniper you didn't see coming. You learn that grief is not the crying— that's the easy part. Grief is reaching for the phone to call them and remembering mid-dial that the number goes nowhere now. People say: they're in a better place. People say: time heals. People say many things that prove they have not yet lost someone who made the world make sense. The house is the same size but larger. The silence is the same silence but louder. Everything is the same except the one thing that made everything work. I don't want to move on. I want to move forward with you still in it— your laugh in the walls, your name in my mouth like a word I refuse to stop saying.