He was my dearest –
not by age, but by soul.
A brother whose laughter
echoed like home,
whose shadow I followed
like a compass in fog.
We sparred in jest,
never in war.
He taught me the weight of words,
the grace of silence,
the art of being
without needing to prove.
Then life,
that quiet thief,
split our paths –
one to a new city,
one to a sick-bed.
Truth became a whisper
beneath the noise of hope.
They said,
โSummer will bring you back together.โ
But summer came
with a silence so loud
it shattered the sky.
He left
just before the world
would have seen him shine.
And I,
still a child,
stood in the rubble
of stories unfinished.
I searched for him
in other faces,
other voices –
but no two hearts
beat the same rhythm.
Mistakes were made
in the name of healing.
Unspoken grief
grew roots in my chest.
Yet somehow,
the tunnel did not stay dark.
A flicker,
then a flame –
not of forgetting,
but of becoming.
I carry him now
not in memory alone,
but in every choice
to love,
to rise,
to speak truth
even when it trembles.
The light at the end
was never escape –
it was return.
To myself.
To him.
To the bond
that even death
could not unmake.
