Category: life

• Afraid Not of Death, But of Absence

  I woke from a dream
  where I was dying—
  alone.

  Alone,
  as I searched your eyes
  and found only coldness.

  Alone,
  as I called your name
  and silence answered in your place.

  Alone,
  as I reached for your warmth
  and touched nothing but air.

  Alone,
  as our laughter—once alive—
  collapsed into a room full of echoes.

  Alone,
  as I stretched toward your love
  and found a hollow,
  a house without a soul.

  —

  I am not afraid of dying.

  I am afraid
  of living in a world
  where I am unseen by you,
  where something once connected
  comes undone.

  I am afraid
  of boarding a long-distance train
  without your gaze to hold me,
  without your goodbye to anchor me
  to something that was real.

  I am afraid
  you will forget me—
  as if we never happened,
  as if our shared existence
  was only a passing dream
  I imagined alone.

  And most of all,
  I am afraid
  that at the end of the day,
  when all things quiet—

  I will still have to go,
  still have to be,

  without your love.

  March 22, 2026

  Love, mortality, poetry, reflection

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• A Sunday Visit

  On a quiet Sunday afternoon,
  a knock at the door—
  soft, certain.

  I opened,
  and there he stood,
  a stranger dressed in familiarity.

  “My name,” he said,
  “is Mortality.”

  I hesitated—
  not from fear,
  but from the weight of being seen.

  “What do I owe
  the pleasure
  of such an early visit?”

  He smiled, almost kindly.
  “You’ve been thinking of me.
  I thought it best
  we meet.”

  So I let him in.

  I brewed tea
  with trembling hands,
  and we sat across
  a small wooden table—
  two beings
  pretending this was ordinary.

  I looked into his eyes.

  There—
  a flicker of time,
  a sweetness
  too delicate to keep,
  and beneath it,
  the quiet tragedy
  of how briefly
  everything is allowed to exist.

  I stared longer
  than I should have—
  and saw, waiting patiently,
  the end of all things.

  My chest tightened.
  Grief arrived
  before loss had reason to.

  Tears gathered—
  uninvited,
  but understood.

  Mortality leaned forward,
  gentler now,
  and told me a story:

  Two lovers,
  born in different seasons—
  one of sun,
  one of falling leaves.

  They were never meant
  to stay,
  only to pass
  through one another.

  But for a few fleeting weeks,
  their worlds overlapped.

  And in that brief collision,
  they loved—
  fully,
  recklessly,
  as if time
  had forgotten them.

  They knew
  it would end.

  And still,
  they chose each other
  anyway.

  Mortality finished his tea.

  At the door,
  he turned—
  not as a stranger,
  but something closer
  to a teacher.

  “I leave you a gift,”
  he said.

  Not time—
  never time.

  But urgency.

  The quiet, burning knowing
  that this moment—
  this breath,
  this love,
  this life—

  is already
  leaving.

  And therefore,
  is everything.

  March 22, 2026

  life, Love, mortality, poem

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