The Morning I Woke And You Were Already Gone

I woke with your name on my lips and the bed still warm beside me and understood before opening my eyes that whatever had held you here through the night had finally let go.

The curtains breathed with the early wind and pale light spilled across the floor stopping just short of where you used to stand watching me sleep. My hand reached out by instinct meeting only the faint impression of warmth as if the air remembered you better than I did. Outside a bird called once and fell silent. The room felt larger in your absence as if the walls had taken a step back.

I lay there listening to the quiet settle into its final shape and knew that loving you had always meant learning how to lose you slowly. The cost had been accumulating in small merciful increments and now it had come due all at once.

I met you in the hospital stairwell where the light never quite reached the corners and the smell of disinfectant clung to everything like a second skin. I had taken the stairs because the elevator reminded me too much of endings doors closing numbers counting down. You were sitting on the landing halfway between floors your back against the wall your knees drawn up as if you were bracing against a cold only you could feel.

You looked up when I stopped breathing and smiled like you had been waiting for me specifically not for anyone else who might pass. You said my name softly testing it. I asked if you were lost. You shook your head and said you were lingering. The word stayed with me because it felt honest in a way most first conversations are not.

The light above us flickered and settled. I noticed then that the shadow behind you did not quite match the shape of your body. It lagged slightly like a memory. I should have walked away. Instead I sat beside you feeling the chill of the concrete through my clothes and asked why.

You told me you had died three days earlier in a room two floors above us. You said it without drama without tears. You said it like a fact that had surprised you as much as anyone. I laughed once sharp and disbelieving and then stopped when your eyes did not change. They held a tired kindness that felt deeper than grief.

We talked until the building woke around us. You told me fragments about your life about a house with a cracked porch step about a brother who never called. I told you about my father sleeping behind a curtain upstairs his breath already slipping into an unfamiliar rhythm. We did not say why we were both avoiding the rooms we were meant to be in.

After that you found me everywhere. In the vending machine glow at midnight. In the chapel where the air hummed with other peoples prayers. Sometimes you were clearer sometimes you wavered like heat above asphalt. You said you could not leave yet because something in you was unfinished. I said I understood though I did not know what that meant.

When my father died you stood at the foot of the bed while the machines went quiet. The nurse touched my shoulder and spoke my name but you were the one I looked at. You nodded once as if to say this too will pass. I wanted to be angry at you for being calm. Instead I held onto that nod like a promise.

I brought you home with me though you did not cross the threshold so much as appear inside as if the space had made room. The apartment smelled of dust and old paint and rain soaked coats. You walked slowly touching nothing watching everything. You said it felt thinner here closer to wherever you were meant to go. I pretended not to hear.

We fell into a rhythm shaped by limitation. You could not eat but you sat with me while I cooked. You could not sleep but you lay beside me listening to my breath until dawn. When I asked what it felt like you said it was like standing in a doorway holding the memory of a room rather than the room itself.

Sometimes the world reacted to you in small ways. Lights dimmed. Water rippled in a still glass. Once when I laughed too loudly the mirror fogged over and cleared again. Each sign thrilled and terrified me in equal measure. I began to understand that loving you meant existing on borrowed rules.

We never kissed. The closest we came was an evening storm when thunder shook the windows and I pressed my forehead to yours. The contact sparked a cold so intense it burned. You closed your eyes and for a moment your outline sharpened. I smelled ozone and rain. Then it was over and we pulled apart breathing hard though only one of us needed air.

You told me then that staying was costing you something. That the longer you held yourself together the harder it would be to let go. I told you I would help you hold on. You smiled sadly and said that was not how this worked.

Time moved strangely. Days passed quickly nights stretched thin. I began to notice the spaces where you forgot yourself. You repeated stories. You stood in the wrong room waiting for something that never arrived. Once you called me by another name and looked frightened when I corrected you.

The morning I woke and you were already gone the apartment felt hollowed out. I moved through it touching objects you had never touched and found traces anyway. A coolness by the window. A faint pressure on the couch. I sat on the floor and waited. Evening came. You did not.

You returned at dusk quieter than before. You said you had been pulled somewhere else briefly and it had felt right. I nodded and said nothing. I had begun to understand that wanting was not the same as choosing.

The final scene unfolded over an ordinary night. No storms no omens. We sat on the bed with the window open listening to traffic and distant voices. You said you were tired. I said I knew. The air between us hummed softly like a held breath.

You told me what had kept you here. You had been afraid to leave without being known fully by someone who could still feel the world. You said now you were. The words settled slowly painfully. I felt something in me loosen and break.

When you lay down beside me you felt lighter than ever almost transparent. I held you knowing it was the last time my arms would remember the shape. You whispered my name once. The room brightened briefly and then dimmed.

In the morning the warmth beside me faded as I watched. I did not reach out again. I let the absence complete itself. Now I wake alone but not empty. Sometimes when light moves just right I feel a familiar quiet settle in. Loving you taught me how to let go without closing my eyes.