The Room That Doesn’t Forget

I don’t know when life decided to take you from my arms.
I can still smell you in the blankets,
I can still hear your laughter in the walls,
but the house is empty,
and so am I.

I wake up every early morning searching for your shadow,
I find myself calling your name without realizing,
and the silence hits me harder than any word.

It hurts to open my eyes.
It hurts to breathe.
It hurts to keep living here, when you are gone.

People tell me time heals,
but time knows nothing about us.
Time only stretches the hours,
and I sink into every single one of them.

I want to scream at you for leaving me half-finished,
for leaving me broken,
for stealing half of me.

I walk through your room again and again,
touch your toys, your books, your photos,
and everything reminds me you will never return.
Every object seems to look at me and whisper
that the world went on, but you did not.

Sometimes I sit on your bed,
close my eyes, and hug the air,
as if somehow that could hold you.
But I only hold my own pain,
and my tears fall onto the empty pillow.

The nights are endless.
No stars guide me,
no moon comforts me.
Only your absence, heavier than any stone,
heavier than any silence.

I open the window, and the wind deceives me,
bringing whispers that sound like your voice,
but they are just lies of the air.
And I close my eyes again,
alone again, broken again.

Sometimes I get angry at the world.
Who took your laughter?
Who decided your voice would never return?
I scream inside my head, I scream into the void,
and no one hears.
No one can hear.

Then comes nostalgia, cruel and heavy,
dragging me to the days when you were here.
I remember your tiny hand in mine,
the smell of your freshly washed clothes,
the sound of your steps running down the hall.
All of it hurts now,
because I know it will never return.

There are days I just sit on the floor,
looking at your things, not touching anything.
As if touching them would betray you.
As if keeping them intact could bring you back,
even though I know it’s impossible.

The pain becomes routine.
The emptiness becomes a companion.
I get up as if I were still alive,
but I am dead in every gesture I make.
The room remains a silent altar,
a golden prison of memories that kill.

And so the years go by, if years even exist,
talking to nothing,
waiting for a return that will not come,
clinging to memories that kill me a little more
every time I relive them.

There are no miracles.
There are no happy endings.
There is no going back.
Only the room intact,
your things exactly as you left them,
and I… trapped in a world where you are no longer here.

The wind keeps coming through the window,
the sun casts shadows across your bed,
and I stay here,
my heart frozen in the day you left,
my hope shattered forever,
my love that cannot die but cannot live either.

Because you will not come back,
and I cannot leave either.
I can only remain,
watching your absence,
breathing the air of what no longer exists,
and crying a little more,
every day,
every night,
forever.