Dear Universe,
There's a person-shaped space in my life now.
And I don't know how to walk around it.
Everywhere I turn,
They are not there.
And the not there of them is so loud.
I keep forgetting and then remembering,
And the remembering breaks something open all over again.
I don't want to be told that it gets better.
Not yet.
Right now,
I just need to say it plainly.
I miss them.
I miss them and it hurts.
And love this big doesn't have anywhere to go.
So I'm bringing it here.
To you.
Because I don't know where else to put it.
Help me to grieve without trying to do it right.
There's no right.
Let me cry when it comes.
Maybe let me laugh when a memory surprises me.
And let me fall apart on the ordinary days that catch me off guard.
Remind me that grief is just love.
It's a love with nowhere to land.
That I'm not falling apart.
I am a person who loved deeply.
Feeling the full size of that love.
Now that they are gone.
And help me to believe,
Even in the days I cannot feel it,
That nothing real is ever fully lost.
That what they gave me is woven into who I am now.
That I carry them forward in the way I love,
The way I love.
The things I notice.
Because they told me to.
They are not gone from me.
They've only changed shape.
And their love.
The love stays.
The love was never something this world could take.
So let me hold them gently from here.
Let me keep living.
Not as a betrayal of them.
But as a tribute to them.
And let me trust that slowly the space they loved will soften.
From an absence into a kind presence.
Quiet.
Warm.
Always with me.
Amen.
