He is gone

The house feels different now. The air is still, heavy with the weight of absence. Every room echoes with the silence he left behind. His favorite chair, the one by the window where the sunlight would always find him, sits untouched. His books are still stacked on the nightstand, the last page he read marked by a folded corner. But he is gone.

I catch myself listening for his footsteps, for the familiar creak of the floorboards in the hallway. It’s foolish, I know, but habits don’t break easily. The sound of his laughter, the way he used to hum absentmindedly while making coffee—these things linger in my mind, teasing me with their ghostly presence.

Grief is a strange thing. It doesn’t come all at once, like a tidal wave crashing down. Instead, it trickles in, filling the empty spaces where he used to be. I see him in the little things—a jacket left draped over the chair, his handwriting on a note by the fridge. I hear him in the quiet, in the way the wind moves through the trees outside.

People say time will heal, that the pain will dull. Maybe they’re right. But right now, time feels like an enemy, stretching the days longer than they should be, making his absence more unbearable with each passing moment.

I want to hold on to everything—his scent on his pillow, the warmth of his last touch, the sound of his voice in my memory. But I know memories fade. That’s what scares me the most. I don’t want to forget him, don’t want to wake up one day and realize that the details are slipping away.

Still, life moves forward, even when we wish it wouldn’t. The sun still rises, the world doesn’t stop spinning, and people continue with their lives as if nothing has changed. But for me, everything has. Because he is gone.

And I don’t know how to live in a world without him.