The Fourth

Today is August 4th.

And I hate the calendar for knowing.

For arriving like it’s just another day,

like it isn’t the date my life came undone quietly,

while the world kept doing what it does—

forgetting.

Every 4th now is an echo.

Of what used to be.

Of what I used to be.

There are people who will tell you what to do with grief.

That it comes in waves.

That it teaches.

That it grows you.

But what they don’t say—

what they can’t bear to say—

is that some waves don’t recede.

Some grief just lives in the walls,

in the clothes I can’t bring myself to give away,

in the way I flinch when someone uses the word healing

like it’s a destination

and not a betrayal.

Because every time I am told I’m getting stronger,

I wonder what part of you I had to let go of to do it.

I keep my world small now.

Not because I want to—

but because every connection I make

only reminds me of the one I can’t.

When someone leaves,

or fades,

or says “see you later,”

my body answers with a silence so loud

it feels like the night you died

never stopped echoing.

I am told to move forward,

to make new memories,

to buy new clothes,

as if fabric on my skin could somehow rethread a soul.

But I don’t want a new wardrobe.

I want your shirts back.

The ones I still wear to sleep,

because your scent—what little is left—

feels like the closest thing to God.

People say things like,

“You’re doing so well,”

as if endurance were a virtue.

As if surviving this doesn’t make me smaller

and colder

and more deaf

to the world

that kept spinning

while mine stopped.

I don’t want what they want for me.

I don’t want transformation.

I don’t want a story arc.

I don’t want the light at the end of this particular tunnel

if it means I have to admit

you’re never walking through the door again.

I live nowhere now.

Nowhere is home.

Home was you.

And every place I go,

someone is profiting

or posturing

or pretending this pain is a platform.

But I am not a project.

I am not a phoenix.

I am a woman trying not to disappear

under the weight of a love

I can no longer touch.

So today,

on the 4th,

I mark time like a prisoner carves into stone—

not to count progress,

but to prove I was here.

That we were here.

And I will not move on.

I will not reframe this.

I will not alchemize the worst day of my life

into someone else’s redemption story.

I do not want to be someone else.

I only wanted to be the person

who still had you.