Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow 

No one talks about the sound 
a room makes after someone leaves it forever.

Not silence 
something heavier.

Like air that forgot how to move.

Years pass.

Furniture changes.

Walls are painted over.

But absence is a loyal tenant.

It remembers where everything was.

A name is spoken less often,

then carefully,

then only in certain rooms.

Time doesn’t erase it 

it just teaches people how to swallow

without choking.

The children inherit questions.

The adults inherit guilt.

Everyone inherits the wondering 

what sign was missed,

what word arrived too late.

Water keeps its secrets.

So does night.

So does the family who learned

to love around a hole

instead of filling it.

They say it’s painless.

They say that because they’re still here to say it.

Pain doesn’t end 

it migrates.

It learns new names,

new faces,

new decades.

Someone has to sing what’s left behind:

the chairs that stay empty,

the birthdays that hesitate,

the way grief shows up uninvited

half a century later

and still knows where to sit.

And life goes on 

not triumphantly,

not gracefully 

but stubbornly,

carrying the weight forward

because it has no other way.

 

Jonah Libertine Gill
©️Libertine 13 

26/01/2026