There is a shadow now in the space where you used to be, a quiet outline of everything soft that once lived beside me without asking for anything but the chance to love and be loved. Your leaving was sudden, a moment so sharp it split my world into before and after. One breath you were here, warm and real, and the next the universe tore a page from my hands before I even knew I was reading it. I still stumble over the word was. It feels wrong, like trying to close a book that’s still open in my heart. Because to me, you are still here— in the memories that glow even through the shock, in the way my body remembers your softness, your trust, your quiet, steady presence. You taught me what unconditional love looks like when it doesn’t need words. You showed me that love isn’t something spoken, it’s something lived— in tiny actions, in gentle moments, in simply being there when the world felt too heavy. You might have been only a chapter in my life, but I was your whole book. Every page you had Every page you had was written with me in it— every comfort, every safety, every moment of warmth you ever knew. And that matters. It matters more than the suddenness, more than the trauma, more than the ache that still catches me when I walk past the place where you used to be. I carry you now the way you once carried me— quietly, steadily, with a love that hasn’t gone anywhere.