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the song of Grisha
The Song of Grisha
I knew you were leaving
long before the papers called you to the city.
It was in how your eyes began to skim
rather than settle—
how your thoughts crowded out the silence
we once shared between questions.
You taught me to ask— not for answers,
but for depth. And I loved you for that,
though I never said it. Not in words.
Only in the way I lingered near your chair
longer than the lesson required.
I think I began to vanish
the day I saw you in the orchard,
speaking of tomorrow
like it were yours to command.
And I— still a boy, too soft to carry revolutions—
stayed rooted in the now, watching petals fall
from a tree already marked for clearing.
You will forget this. Not out of cruelty—
but the way one forgets the warmth
of a fire once they’ve found the sun.
But I remember the hush
as you reached for your coat,
the distance blooming
like fog between the river and my voice.
And I think, when the water finally sang to me,
it used your name.
Not loudly— but with a kind of knowing that undid me.
