Sophia Xia
Tag(s): Grief
You move slowly, feet brushing the earth beneath you, where marigolds have scattered like golden echoes. The night is full of flickering altars, flames dancing on the edge of darkness, each one a beacon for those beyond the veil.
You stop, staring at the photographs—frozen moments, a smile that no longer warms.
It’s there, their faces, but you can’t touch them.
Can’t reach them.
Grief is a hand outstretched
to an empty room.
The air, though rich scented with burning sage and copal, sharpens the ache. You walk through it, a ghost in the crowd, tethered not to the joy, but to the hollow where joy used to live. Voices rise in song, and still, you feel the weight, the pull of memories too deep to carry without breaking.
You pause by the altar.
Candles flicker like heartbeats, fragile against the wind. You wonder if they’re close tonight, if they hear your steps on the earth, feel the crack in your chest widening. The marigolds glow, too bright, and the offerings lie in abundance, but it’s never enough to fill the absence.
I light a candle for you, but the flame
only reminds me of all the things
I cannot hold.
The night grows colder, but the world burns on in celebration. The streets hum with life, but you feel like you’re walking through water, every sound muffled by the rush of memory. It’s not the images of them that ache, but the spaces between—the places where they should be, but aren’t.
Absence is not silence;
it hums, it pulses,
a song with no melody.
You look up. Stars scatter like ashes across the sky. The laughter of strangers fills the space where their voices should have been. You close your eyes, and the weight shifts again, heavy and hollow all at once.
You breathe, but it feels like holding on too tight.
I wear your absence
like a second skin.
I breathe, but you are the air I cannot catch.
I live, but you are the shadow I cannot leave.
The marigolds tremble in the breeze, petals falling one by one. You pick one up, hold it between your fingers—soft, alive, but wilting even as you watch.
Do the dead miss the living, as you miss them? Do they feel the distance stretching like an unbridgeable river?
You are everywhere tonight,
but nowhere I can reach.
Still, I wait for the sound of your name,
a whisper against the wind.