The Love That Did Not Know You Were Gone
From Letters Never Sent
I do not know what name to give what you have become in me.
Love seems too ordinary a word for something that has survived so many years without being given a life. Grief is not right either, because grief belongs to things that have ended, and somehow you have never entirely ended.
There are days when I am certain I have forgotten you. I make tea. I answer people. I laugh at something insignificant. I move through the hours like someone whose heart has finally learned good manners.
Then, without warning, I remember some small thing.
Not your face.
Not even your voice.
Only the person I was when I believed you would remain.
And suddenly I understand that perhaps this is what I have been mourning all these years.
Not you.
Her.
The woman who loved you before she knew that love could continue long after there was nowhere left for it to go.
Sometimes I wonder whether you carry even one small piece of me into your ordinary days. Whether my name has ever arrived unexpectedly in your mind while you were driving somewhere, closing a door, looking through an old drawer.
I hope it has.
Forgive me.
There are still parts of me selfish enough to want to have been unforgettable to you.
But if I have disappeared completely, I will survive that too.
I have survived almost everything about loving you.
What I have never learned is how to explain why, after all this time, some part of my heart still turns toward a door it knows will never open.
Perhaps that is why I am writing this instead of sending it.
I no longer need you to come back.
I only needed somewhere to put the love that did not know you were gone.
The Love That Did Not Know You Were Gone
From Letters Never Sent
I do not know what name to give what you have become in me.
Love seems too ordinary a word for something that has survived so many years without being given a life. Grief is not right either, because grief belongs to things that have ended, and somehow you have never entirely ended.
There are days when I am certain I have forgotten you. I make tea. I answer people. I laugh at something insignificant. I move through the hours like someone whose heart has finally learned good manners.
Then, without warning, I remember some small thing.
Not your face.
Not even your voice.
Only the person I was when I believed you would remain.
And suddenly I understand that perhaps this is what I have been mourning all these years.
Not you.
Her.
The woman who loved you before she knew that love could continue long after there was nowhere left for it to go.
Sometimes I wonder whether you carry even one small piece of me into your ordinary days. Whether my name has ever arrived unexpectedly in your mind while you were driving somewhere, closing a door, looking through an old drawer.
I hope it has.
Forgive me.
There are still parts of me selfish enough to want to have been unforgettable to you.
But if I have disappeared completely, I will survive that too.
I have survived almost everything about loving you.
What I have never learned is how to explain why, after all this time, some part of my heart still turns toward a door it knows will never open.
Perhaps that is why I am writing this instead of sending it.
I no longer need you to come back.
I only needed somewhere to put the love that did not know you were gone. M. Dangi
The Love That Did Not Know You Were Gone
From Letters Never Sent
I do not know what name to give what you have become in me.
Love seems too ordinary a word for something that has survived so many years without being given a life. Grief is not right either, because grief belongs to things that have ended, and somehow you have never entirely ended.
There are days when I am certain I have forgotten you. I make tea. I answer people. I laugh at something insignificant. I move through the hours like someone whose heart has finally learned good manners.
Then, without warning, I remember some small thing.
Not your face.
Not even your voice.
Only the person I was when I believed you would remain.
And suddenly I understand that perhaps this is what I have been mourning all these years.
Not you.
Her.
The woman who loved you before she knew that love could continue long after there was nowhere left for it to go.
Sometimes I wonder whether you carry even one small piece of me into your ordinary days. Whether my name has ever arrived unexpectedly in your mind while you were driving somewhere, closing a door, looking through an old drawer.
I hope it has.
Forgive me.
There are still parts of me selfish enough to want to have been unforgettable to you.
But if I have disappeared completely, I will survive that too.
I have survived almost everything about loving you.
What I have never learned is how to explain why, after all this time, some part of my heart still turns toward a door it knows will never open.
Perhaps that is why I am writing this instead of sending it.
I no longer need you to come back.
I only needed somewhere to put the love that did not know you were gone. — M. Dangi
