There are absences that go unnoticed until one takes a breath and realises that something is missing.
It is not noise or shadows, but an emptiness that has learned to speak with a name. Since that person left, something in him has stopped moving forward; not his footsteps, but his soul.
That part of himself that is no longer in a hurry, because he has understood that life is not about arriving, but about feeling.
Feeling hurts, but it also awakens. He cannot deny that there are days when he lacks air, faith and the wisest explanation.
However, there are other days when the memory of that person embraces him without asking permission and rebuilds him from the inside. He cries every day, but he also reflects on the moments that make him human, on every small miracle that crosses him and every decision he makes with greater awareness since that person is no longer there to applaud.
He does not outgrow it, because that would mean forgetting; what he feels transforms, expands and settles.
Today he walks with purpose, because having lost someone so dear to him, he can no longer live in the same way: he lives more awake, slower, deeper and more intense.
If life is short, he wants the essence of that person to remain in him as an invisible trace, because he has not gone; he has stayed in a place where no one will ever be able to erase it.