Losing Love Poem by Natasa To

There are names the house still whispers
in the language of settling wood,
in the slow sigh of midnight pipes,
in the chair that keeps its shape
long after no one rises from it.



Grief is not loud at first.
It arrives like winter light—
thin, pale, almost gentle—
until you notice
nothing grows beneath it.



I still reach for voices
that no longer answer.
Still turn to share small joys:
a crooked moon,
a song on the radio,
the way rain gathers on windows
like trembling hands.



People say time softens loss,
but time is only a river;
it carries the living forward
while the heart stands barefoot
on the shore, calling backward
into fog.



And yet—
love does not leave with the body.
It lingers in recipes unwritten,
in laughter inherited by children,
in habits we never meant to keep.
The dead become part of us:
stitched quietly into our breathing.



So when I miss them most,
I light a candle against the dark
and let memory speak.
Not to reopen the wound,
but to remember
that once, for a little while,
we belonged to each other
completely.