For Shepherd 💙

Your heartbeat is silent now.

But I still feel the echo.

It’s quiet in this house, but my soul still hums with your memory.

You’re gone now—

not in the way people say “gone,”

not in the way that implies you packed your things and walked away.

No, you were carried out of this world before your lungs could carry breath.

But I carried you.

You were mine.

And I was the only home you ever had here on earth.

So I’ll read to you sometimes,

because I can’t bear the silence.

I’ll whisper stories and sing lullabies into the quiet, into the place where your cradle should’ve been, into the spot on my chest where your head would’ve rested.

You never got to see your nursery.

But you saw my heart.

You made a home in my womb,

and now you dwell in the space between my ribs and my tears.

Because no one ever really leaves home, do they? They leave a piece behind—

and I have that piece.

I carry it in every breath,

in every ache,

in every sunrise that comes too soon,

in every night I lie awake reaching for what could’ve been.

The world may forget,

but I remember.

I remember how it felt to hope for you,

to dream for you,

to love you without condition or caution.

And though you never opened your eyes,

you opened mine.

So I will keep being your home.

Even here, in this ache.

Even now, in the after.

I will hold space for you—

in my thoughts, in my arms, in my prayers.

And I will read to you still.

Because love doesn’t end where life does.

And you, my darling,

will never be truly gone.