72 - The Boy Was Buried, a Stranger Came Home

Years after I stopped drinking at home, 

the thoughts never left 

they sank, 

patient, beneath the daily grind, 

beneath the new normal.

I had to accept 

that the boy I knew when I left my country died the day he chose to end himself. 

The man who returned was a hollow echo

kindness and laughter stripped away, 

replaced by a grief

sadness, 

resentment like a permanent shadow, 

and a cavern in his chest I could not find a way to fill.

The idea that that young boy was gone haunted me.

Every time I looked at his face a memory would flare

brief, stubborn

a laugh, 

Happy moments, 

Memories I thought I long lost. 

Those flashes cut my soul like a blade.

The first years felt like living with a tenant who resented my presence, 

who avoided my eyes and kept his distance

a stranger under my roof. 

We moved through the rooms like two ghosts, 

passing without touch. 

It took an eternity to coax him back, 

to find the shape of him beneath the shell.

To move forward I had to let go of the boy who would never return. 

I learned to accept the new normal, 

to tend the small, 

stubborn tasks of living

not only for him, 

but for myself, 

because I felt the same hollow edging toward me. 

Almost breaking me multiple times.

So I tried to fill the space with quiet rituals

a kettle left to boil, 

a book opened and not finished, 

a hand offered without expectation.

It was not a rescue so much as a slow reclamation

two fractured shapes learning to occupy the same light. 

Some days the hollow answered with silence

some days it softened into something like company.

We stitched a life from small, 

careful acts, 

neither healed nor whole, 

only present enough to keep the past from swallowing us both.