A Wound That Never Healed

Husna Khan Hashi ||

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Ten years, without you, my brother,
and still the air knows your name.
It trembles in the spaces between
each breath I take,
as if afraid to disturb
the silence you left behind.

The day you were taken
was not a single moment
but a wound that never closed,
a clock that stopped
and yet somehow kept ticking,
dragging me forward
while my heart stayed
with you.

I have learned to carry you
in quiet ways-
your laugh folded into the creases
of my dreams,
your voice hidden
in the rustle of leaves
on wind-heavy nights.

People say grief changes shape,
but mine has only learned
new disguises–
it sits beside me at dinner,
it follows me down empty streets,
it watches as I smile
and knows the truth
that part of me
is still kneeling
at the edge of that day,
calling your name into the dark.

Ten years is nothing
to the love that will not die.
If time were kind,
it would let me trade
every sunrise I have seen since
for one more dusk with you,
standing side by side,
saying nothing at all,
because we never needed
words.

I know you are in heaven,
resting in peace, surrounded
by the gentle embrace of your favorite fruit trees.

A few weeks after you were gone,
you came to me in a dream.
You smiled, your eyes alight with grace,
and with your right hand,
you waved, as if to say,
“I am here, I am free.”

Then you walked toward
a clementine tree, heavy with golden fruit,
its branches swaying in the soft breeze
of a boundless green field.
That day, I knew-
your soul had found its rest,
and you were truly in heaven.

Yet I keep your shadow close,
and I live for the day
when the distance between us
finally folds into nothing,
and we are reunited once more-
with our beloved parents,
in love’s eternal togetherness, forever whole.