in the seventeenth year

ba,

seventeen years is a lifetime when you are the one left behind. it is enough time for a child to grow into an adult, for memories to fade at the edges, for people to tell me that life goes on. and it does. life goes on. that is the cruelest part. life went on without you.

i hate that your absence has become part of the furniture of my life. i know how to walk around it now. i know where it hurts. i know which days it grows teeth. i know how to smile while carrying it. but knowing how to survive something does not mean it no longer brings me to my knees when it finds me.

i do not know where to put all this love anymore. seventeen years, and it still has nowhere to go. so it stays here. in my chest. in my writing. in every version of me that is still looking for you in the world.