I don't mean to feel you. But the night has its own agenda. And somewhere between waking and sleep, you arrive.

Not in the room. Not in the air. But deeper in that private place inside me where your name still lives in a language Only I remember.

The sheets feel too wide; the quiet presses. The clock ticks with the urgency of someone trying to fill a silence they don't know how to hold.

And then there you are.

Not as a memory. As a presence. Like you've been folded into the hours all along, waiting patiently in the dark for me to go, still enough to notice, finally.

I don't chase the past anymore.

But the past, I've learnt, is not finished with me.

It sends you back in fragments, a song at 2 a.m. that knows too much, a shadow on the wall shaped like forgetting, a dream that dissolves at first light, leaving only a feeling behind, nameless, weightless, and entirely yours.

I wonder, sometimes, if you feel it too.

When the world goes quiet, does something stir? Do you miss the way we spoke without needing words? the fluency of being known and the ease of being held by someone Who never asked you to explain yourself?

I do.

I miss being at someone's home. I miss having one. But I want you to know I am not broken.

Just changed. The way a landscape changes after A long season is not ruined, just different. Carrying something the untrained eye might miss.

Time moved. So did I.

But love, the real kind, doesn't pack its bags cleanly. It doesn't forward its mail or leave a forwarding address.

It lingers in the baseboards. It softens at the edges. It learns to live quietly in the rooms we don't always open. So no, I don't cry the way I used to.

The grief has found its shape. It fits now, the way old furniture fits a room. You stop noticing it until the light hits it at a certain angle. And you think, "Oh. "There it is.

But in the middle of the night, When everything else goes still, I feel you. And for a moment, I let myself remember us. Not to go back. Never to go back. But because part of me never really left   And I've decided, finally, that that's okay.

The grief has found its shape. It fits now the way old furniture fits a room. You stop noticing it until the light hits it at a certain angle. And you think -oh. There it is. A piece for the ones whose love never fully left. somewhereikeptyou.com


If this finds you at 2 a.m., you are not alone in it. 🌸

Some books for the ones who feel love long after it's gone:

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang
For the ones who carry things that don't have an official name.

Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed
For when you need someone to sit with you in it and say, "Me too."

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
For grief that doesn't announce itself. The quiet kind. The kind that fits like old furniture.

You might also need:


 Some Feelings Run So Deep That Words Cannot Touch Them
The Person Everyone Leans On But No One Checks On

With love, always 🌸
Shreya - Somewhere I Kept You