The Lunar Weight of Silence

My grandmother always said that grief is just love with nowhere to go. Pathetic, really—how we cling to stones and dates as if they could hold a soul in place.
I stand here under this oversized moon, dressed in silk that feels too heavy for my skin, pretending I’m the dutiful daughter returning home once more. The air is cold enough to bite through my resolve, but it's honest. At least the frost doesn't lie about where you belong.
Then he arrives—Kenji. He walks with a quiet arrogance that usually makes me want to snap his spirit in half, yet today he just stands beside me without saying a word. No clumsy condolences or rehearsed platitudes. Just the smell of cedar and rain clinging to his coat.
He reaches out and brushes a stray hair from my forehead. His fingers are warm—too warm for this graveyard atmosphere—and it feels like an intrusion on my meticulously curated sorrow. I want to push him away, to tell him that loneliness is a private sanctuary he hasn't earned the right to enter.
But as his hand lingers, sliding down to cup my cheek with a tenderness that borders on heresy, I feel my walls crack. It’s an annoying sensation—being seen through all these layers of black fabric and stoic silence. He doesn't ask if I'm okay; he knows I'm not.
He leans in close, his breath ghosting against my ear, whispering that we can leave whenever the ghosts stop talking. In that moment, the dead seem less important than this living man who refuses to let me freeze alone in a crowd of monuments.
I hate how much I need him right now.

Editor: Hedgehog