Walking Them Home

Some grief doesn't end, it just learns to walk beside you.

“Remembering is an act of resurrection, each repetition a vital layer of mourning, in memory of those we are sure to meet again." Nancy Cobb

There is a particular hour

When the light does something strange,

not quite day, not yet dark,

just the world pausing

like it remembered something

it had been trying to forget.

That is when I walk.

The road is smooth beneath my feet.

Lit. Swept. Ordinary.

Children somewhere behind a gate.

A woman hanging washing.

A man on a phone, laughing

at something I will never know.

And I walk through all of it

carrying what does not show.

But I am not a person with no particular weight.

I drift, the way you drift

in the space between sleeping and waking,

not fully here,

not fully gone,

somewhere in the in-between

where the past is not the past

but a room you can still walk into.

And in that room,

There are people laughing.

There are children running toward something good.

There is a woman fixing her hair

in a small mirror,

not knowing that this moment,

this one,

would become the kind of moment

someone would mourn for decades.

There is love, ordinary and unhurried.

Plans being made.

A name being called across a yard.

Someone falling asleep

feeling safe.

And then the room shifts.

I do not stay in the shift long.

I have learned not to.

But I let it pass through me

the way cold air passes through an open door,

just long enough to remember

that it was real.

That it happened on ground like this.

That people ran where I now stroll.

That the hills I find beautiful

watched things happen

that hills should never have to watch.

I come back to my feet.

To the road.

To the soft noise of an evening

that does not know what I am carrying.

Healing is real.

I need you to know I believe that.

Some days the weight sits differently,

not gone, but manageable,

like something you have learned

to pack well.

Some days I almost feel light.

And then a particular slant of sun.

A particular smell.

A sound from somewhere,

and it is all there again.

Not to break me.

Just to remind me

that love does not expire

simply because the person did.

And so I walk.

Not to arrive anywhere.

Not to perform anything.

Just to show up on this road

with their names in my chest

and my feet still moving.

Because someone has to walk

the roads they ran.

Someone has to stand

in the spaces they could not stay in.

Someone has to live

wide open

in a world that tried to make them disappear.

And now,

I want to speak

to the ones who ran.

To the ones who hid in silence so complete

they forgot the sound of their own breathing.

To the ones who survived

and have spent every day since

trying to understand

what surviving means.

To the ones who smile at work on Monday

and fall apart somewhere private on Tuesday.

To the ones who have never had the words

and have never needed anyone to ask

because no words were ever going to be enough.

I see you.

Not the version of you

that learned to function.

Not the version that answered

“I’m fine”

so many times

it started to feel almost true.

The version that still wakes at a certain hour.

The version that flinches at sounds

no one else notices.

The version that carries faces

in a place inside you

that no one else has access to.

That version.

I see that one.

The world moved on.

I know it did.

You watched it happen,

the calendars turning,

the buildings going up,

the conversations moving

to other things,

other news,

other grief.

And you stayed.

Carrying what you carry.

Some days stronger.

Some days back at the beginning.

Some days both at once

in a way that makes no sense

and perfect sense

at the same time.

You are not alone in that.

You were never alone in that.

I walk this road for you.

In the dreamlike hour

when the light does something strange

and the hills hold their breath

and the world pauses.

I am here.

Witness to what happened.

Witness to what it cost.

Witness to the extraordinary weight

of still being here

and choosing, again,

to keep going.

The lights come on, one by one.

The evening settles.

And I walk.

For you.

And I walk.

Rugo, A Piece of My Heart on Paper!