The Love That Had No Funeral Poem by Martins Akhoeneto

Some loves do not die
they simply grow quiet,

like rain leaving a roof
without farewell,
like footsteps fading
until the hallway forgets their weight.

Ours ended in smaller ways:

shorter messages,
fewer questions,
silences growing longer

until I realised
I was no longer speaking to you,
but to your memory,
hoping it would answer.

There was no final embrace,
no grave,
no flowers for what we lost.

So I buried us
in the rituals of absence:

I stopped searching for your name,
stopped reopening our old words,
stopped leaving the light on
for a love
that had already gone home.

Yet some nights,
the heart still sets two cups
on an empty table.

And I understand then

some loves leave no grave;

they leave a room
inside you
where the silence
still knows their name.