Keepsakes

After someone leaves, the things they left behind keep holding the room.

A hoodie still draped over the chair in July.
A coffee mug staring back from the midnight sink.
A striped umbrella by the front door, even on sunny days.
Mail still arriving in their name, season after season.
A photograph on the screen, still laughing, still bright.

Can't throw them away. Can't get them back. Can't decide.
And in that in-between space, only the objects keep faithful time.

Loss doesn't move in straight lines.
The mind tries to forget, but the heart remembers.
The objects stay exactly where they were.
Time passes, the days grow lighter, you sing a quiet song,
you eat something sweet to face the morning -
and then, without warning, a photograph pulls you back.

A smile that looks like it was taken just yesterday.
The time capsule is cruel that way.

But slowly, the memory becomes something else -
deep and shallow at the same time -
until one day, it turns into gratitude.
Only those who have lived it truly understand.

"Keepsakes" is a song cycle of nine quiet farewells -
nine objects holding the weight of someone no longer here.
A love album for those moments
when the past refuses to stay in the past.

A mango eaten one summer afternoon.
Taillights bleeding into the rain on a midnight drive.
An umbrella waiting for a sky that won't change its mind.

Each thing remembers what the heart still cannot let go.
The pain hidden inside the bright moments,
and the light that flickers within the pain -
both are held here, side by side.

Written from a place beyond the wound -
not erasing the pain, not running from it,
but choosing to let these small things stay,
"like proof that it was real."