In Memory of Glen

It has been two years since you left this world.
I still miss you,
and I cannot imagine finding new love.
Thirty years of intimacy
cannot be erased in two.

Healing has been hard -
harder than I ever knew to expect.
Some days it felt like carrying a stone in my chest,
like learning to breathe again
through the ache of your absence.
The raw pain of those early months
has softened into something
I still do not know how to name.

I have found joy again.
I have found laughter.
But when I come home,
it is only Nyx and me,
and the empty chair
where you used to sit.

I keep your iPad and iPhone charged.
Somehow, it feels like I can keep you alive that way.

I do not know what tomorrow brings.
I am still trying to find my place in this world,
a place where I feel I belong,
where life does not feel so altered
by the shape of your absence.

Right now, it feels like I will miss you forever.
Maybe that is the truest thing I know -
That love does not leave
just because a life does.