If I’m not around, don’t leave me only flowers.
Leave me pieces of friendships
that once felt like they would never end.
Photos.
Necklaces.
Cards.
Messages.
The traces of every best friend
who knew me deeply,
even if they don’t call me theirs anymore.
Leave me stuffed animals.
The ones that kept watch
through every version of me
No one else really saw.
The overthinking.
The quiet nights.
The versions I didn’t have words for yet.
Leave me my favourite books.
The ones that became doorways
when the world felt too heavy
or too loud to stay in.
Leave their pages open
like the stories are still moving forward.
And remember all versions of me.
The ones who thought things would stay the same.
The ones who learned they don’t.
The ones I outgrew without meaning to.
I’m still becoming all of these things.
Leave me the clothes I wore too often
to notice I was changing.
The ones that started to feel like skin
for a version of me I can’t go back to.
Leave me old blankets.
The ones that caught tears
and turned into something like safety
on nights when home didn’t feel like home.
And leave me laughter.
The kind that filled rooms
with people who once meant forever,
and meant it at the time.
Leave me the lessons too
the ones I didn’t think I’d live long enough to learn.
If you think of me later,
don’t think in endings.
Think in moments that seemed ordinary
until they weren’t.
The jokes.
The conversations.
The friendships.
The quiet understanding between them.
Because flowers fade.
But people don’t disappear from the places
they were once fully loved.
They stay in stories.
In objects.
In memory.
In the small things that still mean something
long after everything changes.