Living with loss is not about forgetting – it’s about learning to carry it differently. Even after years have passed, I find myself navigating moments where absence feels as present as it did in the beginning. Settling into a new home hasn’t eased the weight, it's only changed its shape.

The words below speak to the space I still find myself in: between what was and what is now:

"I am still in the place
where you used to be.
Now in an abyss,
drawn daily by the steady pull of your absence,
a gravity that absorbs 'my' loss.

I feel your loss, but there is no end.
As I grasp at the echoes
calling your name,
your voice is too far gone
to answer back, but the spiritual signs are still here.

As the world moves on, down here,
time drifts without shape.
I forget what day it is,
struggling to comprehend I am now just one.

Somewhere spirit bound
I know you are weightless,
You have your health back
but I keep falling,
still bound to the gravity of you,
trying to work my way back up."

– Ilana Estelle