what he lost
491 Words
*
The silence in the house was deafening.
Her laughter used to fill every corner — soft, sweet, and constant, like sunlight through a window. Now it was gone, replaced by echoes of words he wished he could take back.
He sat in the same chair where he’d once told her she was “too much,”
and stared at the empty space she used to fill.
The coffee cup still sat on the counter, half full — the last thing she touched before everything shattered.
He tried to remember what she looked like that morning.
Had she smiled?
Had she spoken?
He couldn’t remember.
All he could see now was the look in her eyes the night she fell — wide, broken, and full of something he’d ignored for too long.
The neighbors came by to offer sympathy. He didn’t answer the door.
Her sister left flowers on the porch, white lilies — her favorite.
He let them wilt there, untouched.
He didn’t deserve their kindness.
For the first time in his life, he felt what she must’ve felt — the slow ache of being invisible.
He walked through the house and found her old journal on the nightstand.
Pages filled with dreams, prayers, and little notes written in pink ink.
Her handwriting was messy, slanted, alive.
He turned to the last page.
> *“I’m still hoping he sees me.
> Not just the woman he blames,
> but the girl who stayed because she loved him,
> even when it hurt.”*
He couldn’t breathe after that.
The walls seemed to close in.
He realized the truth — he hadn’t lost her in one night.
He’d been losing her piece by piece, every time he let his anger speak louder than his heart.
For weeks, he couldn’t sleep. He stopped eating. He barely spoke.
People whispered that guilt was killing him. Maybe it was.
He started going to the small church on the hill — the one she used to visit when things got hard. He sat in the last pew, head bowed, hands trembling.
He didn’t pray for forgiveness.
He prayed for understanding.
He wanted to know why he’d pushed away the only soul who had truly seen him.
And slowly, through the quiet, he began to hear her voice again — not from the grave, but from the pieces of her she left behind.
The little sticky notes in his wallet.
The cross on the dresser.
The memory of her whispering, *“Love doesn’t hurt like that.”*
He broke down one night in the same room she died in.
He fell to his knees, tears spilling onto the floor.
He whispered her name over and over, like it might bring her back.
And for the first time, he felt something shift inside him — not peace, not forgiveness, but *awakening*.
The kind that happens only when you’ve lost everything that mattered.
- Writer
