LIVIA'S BOOKLET

  There is a day that does not pass, it only circles back, soft-footed, unannounced. I have learned not to fight it. It arrives in small ways in the silence between breaths, in the way light rests on empty spaces as if it remembers what once belonged there. I still imagine you in outlines I cannot complete a voice just beyond sound, a presence I almost reach until the moment breaks like thin glass in my hands. Something in me shifted that day not loudly, not all at once but deep enough that even time could not smooth its edges. I have carried it since this quiet, unspoken weight, this tenderness that aches without asking permission. And though the world kept moving, I learned a different rhythm one where loss breathes beside me, not as an enemy, but as a shadow that knows my name. Some things are never buried. They simply become part of you woven into your pulse, hidden in your strength, resting in the spaces you no longer try to fill. A...

  Grief is not loud in my life. It does not scream or shatter glass. It sits in the space between my ribs, breathing softly, like it belongs there. I have learned to carry it gently, like a cup filled too close to the brim, careful not to spill what I no longer have the strength to clean up. There were words I folded into silence, stitched into the lining of my chest. They live there still; unspoken, unheard, unforgiven. Sometimes I wonder if they echo in another world, if somewhere you heard me and chose not to answer. I go on; not because I have healed, but because the world does not pause for broken things. And yet, in the quietest moments, I still turn; as if you might be there, as if grief might finally loosen its grip and let me breathe without remembering.