What Do I Know

Life moves the way it always has—

soft beginnings,

unexpected crossings,

joy that lights the hours,

and endings that come

without asking.

There is no maker behind the curtain.

No purpose assigned to our sorrow.

No promise that this pain

is part of something greater.

We have always been mortal.

Every civilization that came before us—

with their temples and prayers,

their gods of sun and harvest,

their stories of purpose and reward—

each one believed,

and each one ended.

Time has carried them all

to the same quiet place.

I don’t need to explain this.

I don’t need to pretend

that death makes sense.

I only need to feel

what is here now.

They were alive.

They touched my life.

They mattered.

And now they’re gone.

That’s the truth I stand in.

There’s no plan I trust,

no afterlife I wait for.

The grief is real

because the love was real.

The ache I carry

doesn’t need a holy name.

It needs time,

and space,

and maybe some silence.

And even in the absence

of reason or reward,

I find beauty in what we shared—

the kind that doesn’t require

forever

to be worth everything.

So I don’t look up for answers.

I look around.

At what was given freely,

and lost without fairness,

and remembered with my whole heart.

I live with the missing.

I live with the love.

And for me,

that is enough.