Misplaced Love

              

Misplaced Love

Grief...

is not a ghost.

No...

it’s a person.

It knocks.

It sits at the edge of my bed,

folds its hands...

and waits for me to wake.

Grief doesn’t scream.

It whispers.

It hums the song they used to sing

off-key...

but tender.

It smells like their sweater,

feels like the warmth that used to live in this room.

It carries their laugh in its throat,

their absence hanging from its shoulders

like a coat too heavy for the living.

I’ve tried to lock the door.

I’ve begged it...leave me alone.

But grief?

Grief is patient.

It finds another way in.

Through the cracks in my memories,

through the scent of rain,

through a photo I forgot I saved.

At first,

I thought it came to break me.

But grief

grief is not the enemy.

It is love,

standing at the border

of what was

and what will never be again,

refusing to leave.

It’s love that lost its map.

Love that keeps asking,

 “Where do I go now?”

So I stopped running.

I poured grief a cup of coffee.

We sit together in the quiet.

No words.

Just breath.

Just being.

And somehow

that becomes enough.

In time,

I learn its language.

It doesn’t sound like sorrow anymore

it sounds like memory.

Like gratitude wrapped in ache.

Like love,

still burning

in the dark.

Grief teaches me this:

the pain doesn’t vanish.

It transforms.

It softens.

It folds itself into the rhythm of my pulse,

the hum beneath my ribs,

the echo in my laugh.

It becomes

the quiet reminder

that what I lost...

was real enough

to hurt this much.

And isn’t that a kind of miracle?

That love can live on...

even through the ache,

even through the silence,

even through me.

Grief used to wear a face I feared.

Now...

when I see it,

I see them.

I see love.

Just love...

still searching

for a place

to rest.

A Poem by N'game'🦋