Words and peace?

I do not 
speak of them
these days.

Not because I don’t remember,
but because I do—
too clearly.
Their faces have grown softer
with time,
but their absence
is still exact.

Grief taught me to keep my hands
in my pockets,
my eyes on the floor.
It taught me silence—
how to nod when someone says
“they lived a good life,”
and how to walk away
before the second course of conversation
brings the ache to the surface.

Now,
it is your turn—
this person, special to you—withering in pending loss,
and you look to me
perhaps I know something.
But I don’t.
I only know how to survive it,
quietly.
How to fold grief
into a corner of the drawer
and pretend it’s not there
every time I open it.

I want to tell you
something comforting,
but words feel small,
like sparrows
against the sky of what is fading.
So I walk beside you,
saying nothing
because I remember
how the world kept turning
and I couldn’t stand
its indifference.

I won’t say:
It will never go away.
I can’t say:
You’ll get used to it—
not the loss, but the carrying of it.
I don’t say
how sometimes I hear a laugh
like my mother’s
and forget she’s gone
until the laugh ends.

Instead,
I offer presence,
like a stone in your hand—
weighty,
unspoken,
real.