AFTER YOU LEFT

by: Rizal Tanjung

–

I love you
without a sound.

Like rain
that falls
and forgets
why it came.

Your name
still lives
between my breaths,
though I no longer say it.

I wait
not for you,
but for the habit
of you—
a thing that does not know
where to return.

Night
asks nothing.
It simply sits
beside me.

I learn loss
from small things:
an empty chair,
old messages,
time that stopped
without farewell.

I love you
like a wave
that no longer comes,
tired of losing.

The shore
never knows.

Longing
no longer hurts.
It is only heavy,
like a body
that has forgotten
how to rest.

Sometimes I want to cry,
but even tears
choose silence.

God
may be busy,
or perhaps
teaching me
to endure alone.

I do not ask you back.
I only wish
to stop remembering.

But memory
never asks permission.

This is how I live now:
wake,
breathe,
be quiet.

And somehow,
that is enough
to still call it
love.

—
West Sumatra, Indonesia