Loss Has a Language.

You learn it when someone leaves,

They don’t take everything.
They leave behind a hundred little versions of themselves.
Soft echoes in rooms you thought were yours.

Their slippers near the door.
The way they used to say your name.
The half-finished jar of pickle they liked with dal.

Loss doesn’t happen all at once.
It happens in pieces.
In the teaspoon you reach for and realise it’s the one they always used.
In the ringtone you hear and feel your heart leap before your brain corrects it.
In the silence after dinner when they’d usually complain about the food being too spicy.

And then, it happens in guilt.
For laughing again.
For moving on.
For deleting their number, even though you never called it in months.

Everyone around you tries to help.
They offer strength.
They say “Be strong.”
They say “Time heals.”
But grief isn’t a wound.
It’s a season.

You don’t heal from winter.
You live through it.

You stop expecting their voice to call out from the balcony.
You stop checking your phone for their forwarded messages.
You stop setting aside their favourite biscuit while making chai.

But stopping doesn’t mean forgetting.
It means reshaping.
You make space for their absence.
You carry them like a second skin.

And in some ways, they never really leave.

They become the way you care for others.
The lullaby you hum without realising.
The habit you picked up just to feel close to them again.
The line you say in their tone.

“I’m okay,” you say, the way they would have said it.
Even when you’re not.

That’s what love does.
It doesn’t end.
It evolves.
From presence to memory.
From voice to echo.
From person to ritual.

And some days, out of nowhere, it hits you like a wave.
A smell. A street. A song.
And you crumble all over again.

That’s okay too.
It means they mattered.
It means they still do.

Because people don’t disappear.
They dissolve.
Into conversations, corners, habits, and heartbeats.

You lose them.
And find them.
And lose them again.

Until one day,
You realise you’ve become a part of someone else’s memory now.

And the circle quietly continues.