Writer’s Note:

This piece reflects the stillness and ache of memory.

It’s about the kind of love that shapes us even after it ends.

It lives inside specific moments, like Sunday
mornings, and becomes an enduring part of us.

I wrote this with brutal honesty, blending my voice with an imagined response from someone I once loved.

May it remind you that grief can be a form of love,

And that letting go doesn’t mean forgetting.

~ Shantey Moabelo

You were there. I still am.

I wake to a golden ray of sunlight peeking through the curtain,
inviting the day in its slow, unhurried way.
Sunday mornings have always been my favorite;

soft, slow, sacred.

They arrive with a hush, a reverence,

As though the world remembers how to breathe.

The aroma of coffee still fills the room.
Jazz plays in the background.

A saxophone sighing,
a piano confessing,
a double bass carrying the weight.

But the song sounds different now;
Lonelier.
I still brew the coffee,
But it stirs something hollow inside me.

“Shantey”,
“I remember those mornings; those sacred Sundays.”
“The coffee. The cigarettes. The stillness between us.”
“Back then, it felt holy.”

You’re still in that room, in my mind.
Unchanged.
You still have the same warm chestnut eyes,
the same soft voice,
the same gentle touch.

That moment is immovable;
a photograph framed behind my ribs.

But even now,

years later,

I still live there.
You may have moved on.
Grown.
Changed.

But I haven’t.

“I wondered why you didn’t touch me that morning.”
“Why did you curl away like you were keeping something from me?”
“I tried to reach you”,

“But you were always slightly out of reach.”
“Like I loved a version of you that never fully turned toward me.”

I cried on Sundays after you left.
Cried while making coffee,
while the sax played,
and the sun dared to shine.

Because grief doesn’t knock.
It simply arrives, sits in your favourite chair,
and asks for sugar in its tea.

But in that grief,

I’ve learned to let the tears fall,
to find grace in them.
To stumble and stand again.
To forgive the endings,
That didn’t come with closure.

“I remember when you hurt yourself.”
“Told yourself I didn’t love you.”
“Maybe you’d already decided I didn’t by then.”
“But I did.”

“I honestly did.”

“I left to work on myself.”
“To learn to love me, because I never truly felt that growing up.“
“And maybe…”

“I didn’t feel it from you either.”

Now,

I honour the echo of you that still lives in my mornings.
Not to hold on,
but to understand why I did.
You were love,
and also,
You were the lesson about what love could not fix.

“I’ve found someone now,”
“Someone who makes love feel effortless.”
“Someone who looks at me like I always wanted you to.”
“But you…”

“You’ll always have a part of me.”

You always will, too.

“Still”,
“I don’t think you ever felt the same.”

“Not really.”

“I loved you.”
“You loved the idea of me.”

“And maybe…”

“Just maybe…”

“You know that, too.”