06/04/2026
The Bench
I sit on a weathered bench
overlooking an open field,
where the grass bends with the wind
the way memory bends with time.
There is nothing here to distract me—
no walls, no crowded streets,
only the long stretch of earth
and the sky carrying its endless blue.
Grief likes places like this.
It arrives quietly,
taking the empty space beside me
as though it belongs there.
For a while, I watch the field.
The tall grass moves in waves,
and I think of all the things
that continue after someone is gone.
The wind still crosses the meadow.
The clouds still travel their old roads.
The sun still lowers itself carefully
toward the edge of evening.
And yet the world is altered.
Because there was a voice
that once filled my days,
a laugh that lived in ordinary moments,
a presence that made the horizon feel nearer.
Now there is only this bench,
this field,
and the shape of your absence
stretching farther than either.
I come here sometimes
not to let go of you,
but to sit beside what remains.
To speak your name into the wind.
To listen for nothing.
To remember.
And as dusk settles over the grass,
I realize grief is not a storm passing through.
It is a bench in an open field—
a place I never wished to visit,
yet somehow know by heart,
where love sits waiting
long after goodbye.
