# Missing I don't know what to do with this silence— it pools in the corners like something alive, breathing its own shallow breath. You've taken the ordinary with you: the way light fell across the kitchen table, how the kettle sang its small familiar song, the precise angle of your head when listening. Now even objects betray me. The chair holds your shape still, refuses to forget. The door remembers the particular way you closed it— not quite a slam, not quite gentle, something in between, something entirely yours. I search the rooms for evidence of what remains. A thread. A scent. The impression of a word you started but never finished. Outside, the world continues its loud indifference. Birds don't pause. Traffic doesn't hesitate. But here, in this careful architecture of absence, I've learned a new language— one made entirely of gaps, of all the things I cannot say because you're not here to hear them. The silence isn't empty. It's crowded with everything you took when you went.

I miss everything that has shaped my life.
When I see pictures, when I smell,
when I hear a voice, when I remember the past,
I miss ...

I miss friends I saw so long ago,
people I spoke to or passed on the street years and years before...

I miss my childhood,
my first love, my second friendship, third mistake,
and those I still hold, God's grace towards the unknown ...

I miss the present,
which I cannot seem to live fully,
haunted by what was
and gambling on what might be ...

I miss the future,
which if imagined too bright,
will probably never arrive the way I dream it ...

I miss those who left me and those I abandoned!
Who promised they would return
and never even showed their face again;
I miss those who came rushing,
without truly knowing who I was,
those I will never get the chance to understand.

I miss those who vanished without farewell!
Those who couldn't
say goodbye to me;
the souls who walked the opposite side of my street,
and caught only a glimpse of what might have been!

I miss what I held in my hands
and what I never possessed
but desperately desired!

I miss things
I'm not even sure ever were.

I miss grave moments, hilarious ones,
incidents, encounters ...

I miss the puppy I once loved
who cherished me faithfully, the way only dogs know how!

I miss the books I read, that made me sing, dance, wander!

I miss the songs that called to me and filled me with dreams of better worlds,
I miss the things I lived through
and the things I let slip away,
never quite tasting their sweetness.

How many times I want to find without knowing what to find ...
I do not know where to go away forever ...
to rescue something that I do not know what it is and not understand where I lost it ...

In truth, they say it is how we are made—
to return to the mother tongue, unbidden,
when we are desperate ...
to count money ... to make love ... to speak what burns inside us ...
wherever we are in the world.

I believe that a simple
"I miss you"
or however we might
translate longing into another tongue,
will never hold the weight and resonance of our own word.

Perhaps it cannot truly capture how deeply we
ache for the ones we love, for what we've lost.

And that is why I miss you most of all ...
Because I found a word
that lives on my tongue
every time
I feel this tightness in my chest,
part melancholy, part sweetness,
a word that works
better than any pulse
when you want to speak of life
and what the heart holds.

It is undeniable proof
that we are tender!
That we have loved deeply
what once was ours
and we grieve the good things
that have slipped away through our days ...