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I grieve those who are gone,
and those who still live but no longer belong to my life.
Loss does not always require death.
Sometimes it simply requires distance.

To yearn is to live with a hollow that never quite closes,
a longing for something always just out of reach.
From that longing, melancholy settles in,
and grief learns how to breathe inside the body.

These feelings feel like home.
Not because they are gentle,
but because they are familiar.
Pain and emotional distress have lived with me long enough
to become predictable.
And predictability feels safer
than hoping for something different.

Each time the cycle begins again,
the hurt does not lessen.
My illusions fracture quietly at my feet,
over and over,
and still my heart refuses to unlearn its longing.

I turn inward and question myself.
Do I stay out of love,
or out of obligation?
Are these my own feelings,
or echoes of something I was taught too young to understand?
I was only a child.
Somehow, that seems to matter less than it should.

I tell myself I am no longer hurt.
Maybe that is true.
What remains now is confusion,
and a disappointment that sits quietly,
like something too heavy to carry loudly.

There is a particular grief
in waking up and not recognising
the people who are meant to be your family.
It is a loneliness I would not wish on anyone.

I have lived enough to know how to endure
most of what life throws at me.
It is never the great tragedies that undo me,
but the smallest moments,
the smallest reminders.

A sudden wave.
A familiar ache.
Bitter and recognisable.

Home.