There are places I cannot walk without seeing you.
Even when the streets are empty, even when the world around me has changed, the shadows of you remain — stretching longer than the memories, darker than the night.

It is strange, how love can disappear, but its echo still fills every corner. I thought that when you left, you would take everything with you. But you didn’t. You left behind the traces, the marks, the invisible fingerprints on my life.

I see you in the chair across the room, though it has been empty for months.
I hear you in the laughter of strangers passing by, though your voice is nowhere near.
I feel you in the silence, pressing against me like a presence I cannot shake.

These shadows do not ask permission.
They arrive uninvited, in moments when I least expect them. A song. A smell. The way the evening light hits the window just right. And suddenly, you are here again, not in flesh, not in truth, but in memory that feels just as real.

At first, I fought them.
I closed the blinds. I avoided the songs. I tried to erase the places where we had been. But shadows cannot be erased — they live in the spaces between. The harder you try to chase them away, the longer they linger.

And so, I learned to live with them.

Not as chains, though they feel heavy at times. Not as wounds, though they still ache. But as reminders. Reminders that love, even lost, does not vanish completely. That pieces of you remain, woven into the fabric of who I am.

The shadows remind me that I once lived a story so bright, it cast darkness when it ended.
The shadows remind me that I am capable of loving so deeply, that absence itself has weight.
The shadows remind me that though you are gone, a part of you will always stay, in whispers and fragments, in silence and light.

And maybe, someday, I will see them differently.
Not as ghosts of what was lost, but as proof of what was real.

For now, they walk with me — not always kind, not always gentle, but always present.
The shadows that remain.

Always and Forever

💬 Do you also carry shadows of someone who left? Share in the comments — your story may help another heart feel less alone in the dark.