It’s Been One Month

One Month

It’s been a month.

One month since the world cracked open,

Since the air grew heavier,

Since I forgot how to breathe.

The silence after was deafening,

Louder than any sound I’ve ever heard.

I felt my knees hit the floor,

Felt the cracks form in my chest,

Heard the foreign sound of my own screams

As they echoed into the void.

I held onto the fragments of our memories,

Trying to lock them away for safekeeping,

Knowing my heart couldn’t bear to lose them too.

How has the world not stopped turning?

How does the sun still rise and fall,

When my world is frozen in place?

Every day feels the same—

A blur of disbelief,

A haze of memories and silence

That screams louder than words ever could.

The calendar flips forward,

Marking days that feel meaningless,

Days where your absence is louder than the ticking of the clock.

The world is moving on without you.

And I hate it.

I hate that life continues,

That cars still drive past my window,

That people laugh and smile as if nothing has changed.

For me, everything has changed.

Everything.

And yet, I am stuck here,

Frozen in the space before the stages of grief,

Trapped in this place of disbelief and devastation,

Unable to move forward,

Unable to let go,

Unable to breathe without feeling the weight

Of your absence pressing against my chest.

One month, and I’m still numb.

Still refusing to let myself accept the truth

Because I know if I let it in,

It will destroy me.

It will break me in ways I’m not sure I can recover from.

So I keep it locked away,

Tucked into the corners of my mind,

Hoping that if I don’t look at it too closely,

It won’t hurt so much.

But it hurts anyway.

It hurts every second of every day.

The days blur together,

Each one heavier than the last.

I go through the motions,

Pretending to be okay,

Hiding the storm inside me.

But every step feels wrong.

How do I keep going

When the world feels meaningless without you?

I feel the weight of all the things

We didn’t say,

The plans we made,

The memories we should have had.

They are ghosts that haunt me,

Echoes of what could have been.

You were supposed to be there for Autumn’s birthday.

She turned two yesterday.

How do I explain this to her?

How do I find the words

To capture the essence of who you were?

How do I tell her about the man

Who loved her more than words could ever express?

I’m stuck in this stage before grief,

This endless loop of disbelief and sorrow.

I can’t cry the way I think I should.

The tears come in waves,

Unpredictable and violent,

But they never feel like enough.

I want to scream,

To rage against the universe for taking you,

But I don’t have the strength.

All I have is this numbness,

This emptiness that swallows me whole.

I keep waiting for it to make sense,

For the pain to find its shape,

For the grief to settle into something I can hold.

But it hasn’t.

It just hovers,

A shadow that follows me everywhere I go,

A weight I cannot shake.

How do I begin to grieve

When I never got the chance to say goodbye?

I feel like I am drowning,

Caught in a sea of emotions I cannot name.

There is no map for this,

No guide to tell me how to navigate this pain.

All I have are the fragments of who I was before,

And the hope that someday,

I will find my way back to myself.

But for now,

I am here.

In this moment.

In this stage before grief begins.

In this space where time stands still,

And the world feels empty without you.

I don’t know how long I’ll be here,

How long it will take to find my way forward.

But I know one thing for certain—

I will carry you with me,

Always.