By Betty Jacob
She still folds his shirts.
Not because she believes he'll return,
but because her hands don’t know
how not to.
She speaks to the silence
as if it were him
asks if he liked the spices in last night’s curry,
tells him the neighbour’s dog has grown old.
No one listens,
but mothers,
they speak anyway.
they told her it was quick
the crash, the silence.
as if fast death is any mercy
to a mother who still hears his keys
jingling in the door.
elsewhere,
a father tapes cardboard to the windows
as the bombs fall again.
his daughter asks if thunder can fall from planes.
he nods.
lies.
somewhere, another father
doesn’t get the chance.
a girl kneels at the rubble.
one sock. a burnt doll.
no name tag.
only smoke.
how do you grieve someone
you cannot bury?
a boy waits by the door at 6:03,
because his parents used to come at 6:00.
He tells himself, maybe the traffic.
Maybe the road forgot the way today.
Maybe the sky swallowed them by mistake.
He hugs a shirt two sizes too big,
still smells like aftershave and goodbye.
you call it war.
they call it a Tuesday.
the world watches.
then scrolls.
grief isn’t loud.
grief is laundry half-done.
a voicemail you replay
for the voice, not the words.
grief is tea cups that stay full.
closets that stay shut.
birthdays circled on calendars
that no one flips anymore.
grief is surviving
when they didn’t.
and still—
a boy wears his father’s coat
to feel him in the sleeves.
a girl draws birds
because her brother said
he wanted to fly
when he grew up.
and somewhere,
someone is still buying strawberries,
still leaving the porch light on,
still writing “come home”
into the fog of their kitchen window.
still keeping the Wi-Fi password the same,
in case they need to connect again.
because love does not know
how to accept absence.
and the living—
they do not know how to stop
waiting