the silence that answers

once again,
our house was surrounded by grief—
not loud,
not screaming,
but the kind that seeps through walls,
hums in the cracks of the floorboards,
and lingers like smoke after something precious has burned.

oh death—
why are you shaped like absence?
why do you leave echoes where laughter once lived?

i used to whisper your name
when the world felt too heavy to carry,
a quiet invitation in the dark.

now,
i still call for you,
not with my voice,
but with the ache behind every heartbeat—
a hidden prayer stitched in silence.

i am not afraid of you.
it’s not dying that haunts me—
it’s the way you steal others away,
the way you hollow out chairs at dinner tables
and leave their cups untouched.

i fear the way you turn warm skin into memories,
into stories we tell ourselves to keep from forgetting.
i fear the way you make rooms feel colder,
even when the sun is out.

but then,
after your storm,
comes a stillness—
and in that stillness,
a strange kind of comfort:
they do not suffer anymore.
they do not cry.
they do not ache.

and maybe,
just maybe,
that’s a kindness we cannot understand
until we are dust too.

we loved them so fiercely
that we could not bear to see them in pain.
so we let go,
even when our hands bled from holding on.

oh death—
are you a thief or a healer?
a curse,
or a strange kind of mercy?

maybe you are not the end,
but the threshold.
maybe you are the silence
that answers all our questions
in a language only the soul can hear.

and maybe one day,
when we walk through your door,
we’ll understand
why the light
was always hidden behind you.

and until then—
we grieve,
we love,
we live,
knowing
the most beautiful things
are the hardest to keep.