The rain came mean, needling through the trees,
slipping into my collar, licking its way down my spine.
I let it take me.
The wooden bench beneath me groaned, heavy with rot,
as if it, too, had spent years swallowing sorrow.
And then, the bird— dropped into the hush beside me,
black-eyed, waiting, tilting its head like you used to,
like you did that night before the final call
split the dark open.
The air tightened, not with wind, but with you.
Your scent rose sharp from the wet—
edged in cedar, familiar yet wrong,
thick with absence, like breath in a sealed room.
I said your name, cracked and low,
and the bird answered—
not in song, but in something guttural,
like dirt packing itself into a grave,
like the weight of a hand cooling in mine,
like a door unlatched in a house no one lives in anymore.
And I remembered— the promises you made,
the ones that never left me.
Maybe love never dies—it just changes its name to grief.
We swore we’d find each other, even in the after,
but I have only found you in the hollow where absence hums.
I closed my eyes.
And for the first time since they sank you into the earth,
grief had teeth, but I did not bleed.
