I’ve learned that some people don’t leave with thunder or warning—they just slip away, quietly, like dusk folding into night. No goodbye. No explanation. Just absence.

We give them our time, our laughter, our silences. They become part of our rhythm, like breath—so constant we forget it’s even there. Their presence seeps into the corners of our lives, soft and essential, like poetry whispered into the bones of our days.

And then, they’re gone.

What’s left is not just emptiness—it’s a hollow echo, a space that aches. A silence that screams. There’s no remedy for that kind of loss. No salve for the way they’ve imprinted themselves into our very being.

Time tries to help, but it limps beside us. And just when we think we’re healing, we realize: our love hasn’t faded. It’s grown louder. More tender. More desperate. We see, with painful clarity, how deeply we loved them. How much we needed them. How fiercely we still do.

It’s a cruel kind of beauty—this truth that someone can become so much a part of us, their absence feels like losing a limb. They take a piece of us when they go. And what remains is a quieter version of who we were. A version forever marked by their leaving.

😔❤️
©️ Beatriz Esmer
Photo: Lulu (my brother) and I.