Writers Jam

If everything ends, then nothing is truly lost, he has only moved into the same cycle he always belonged to, soil to root, breath to wind —

but if everything ends, then I have lost him in a way that can never be undone. It’s not poetic — it’s violent. One moment he was here, warm, breathing, mine, and the next he was a stillness so absolute it burned through me.

Maybe death is just a door he’s stepped through, and doors are ordinary, harmless things —

but this door slammed shut in my face. I can pound on it until my fists split open, scream until my throat tears, and it will never open. He will never open it.

If I think of his absence as transformation, I can bear it. He’s in the rain over Dehradun, in the dust motes in his shop, in the stories strangers tell —

but I don’t want scattered pieces of him. I want the weight of his hand on my head, the smell of his soap, the sound of him clearing his throat before telling me something important. I want all of him, and I hate the world for thinking fragments are enough.

Energy never vanishes. Science says so. Faith says so. He’s only changed form —

then why does this room feel hollowed out, like someone carved a hole in the air? Why is the chair where he used to sit unbearable to look at? Why does the air feel thinner, like it can’t carry his memory without breaking?

Death might be the truest kind of belonging, a folding back into everything —

but death feels like a theft. It has stolen the pulse from his wrist, the warmth from his voice, the future from my hands. It has left me holding a life that doesn’t fit anymore.

If I keep walking forward, I carry him. He’s stitched into my voice, my choices, my memories —

but each step forward feels like tearing away from him. Every new day is another layer of dust between us. One day I’ll be so far that even memory will fade, and that terrifies me more than dying.

Perhaps the real tragedy would be if he had lived without meaning, but he lived fully, and that should be enough for me —

except meaning is a cruel word when your hands are empty. When the man who called you beta with a tenderness the world cannot replicate is now ash scattered to places you will never touch.