A Familiar Visitor
Grief knocked on my door this morning,
not loudly
Just enough for my heart to recognize
its footsteps
It walked in like an old friend
made itself comfortable in the silence
and asked me,
if I had really forgotten him.
I smiled the kind of smile
that only broken people know
because grief already knew the answer!
It opened the curtains
let the morning light fall across the room.
and somehow even the sunshine
looked like it had known your name.
It played my favorite songs,
not to comfort me,
but to remind me
why they had become my favorites
in the first place.
It asked if I still remembered your birthday.
I laughed.
I don’t remember half my passwords,
yet somehow they still remember you.
It asked if I still got lost
on unfamiliar roads.
I said yes.
Then it asked if I still remembered
the way to your home.
I never answered.
Some silences speak for themselves.
Before leaving,
grief stood by the door
and turned around.
“I’ll come again tomorrow,” it said.
I wanted to ask it not to.
I wanted one morning
that did not begin with your absence.
But Grief only smiled.
because it knew something I didn’t.
that it was never visiting you,
to remind me of you.
It was visiting
because a heart that once loved this deeply
cannot unlearn love overnight.
Bio of the Poet: Avignya Abhilasha Kashyap is a poet from Bhubaneswar, India.
