there will be a death in your life and it will not feel like anything you prepared for, it will not be distant or softened, it will land in your chest and stay there like it belongs

you will lose someone and with them every future you did not even realize you were building around them, all the quiet assumptions, all the small plans, gone at once

time will break, it will not move forward the same way, it will split and you will live on the side that does not make sense; you will think you understood grief before but you did not

not until it knows your name, not until it sounds like you, not until it follows you into the most ordinary moments and ruins them without warning
it will not be loud, not at first, it will be exact, it will take meaning out of things piece by piece until everything feels wrong in a way you cannot explain

you will look at your life and it will feel unfamiliar, like something shifted while you were not looking, like the structure gave out and no one told you. nothing will fit, not in the way it used to

you are not only grieving a person, you are grieving every tomorrow that had them in it, every version of your life that no longer exists. even time will feel different, like it is moving but not taking you with it
grief is not just sadness, it is a change in how you exist inside the world, the world stays the same but you do not and that is what makes everything feel wrong