I thought about you all day,
which isn’t that different from most days.

You cross my mind
more often than I admit.

A song.
A memory.
A familiar expression
on a stranger’s face.

Little things
that somehow still belong to you.

You would have been fifty today.

Fifty.

The number feels impossible.

Not because it sounds old,
but because somewhere inside me
there is still a part that expects
the world to contain you.

I still find myself wondering
how we are all supposed to exist
in a reality where you do not.

I still ask questions
that have no answers.

Why you.

Why then.

Why fifty never came.

I don’t have a childhood memory
that doesn’t carry your fingerprints.
You are in every neighborhood.
Every summer afternoon.
Every careless laugh.

I can still hear your voice.

“Come on, baby, you know you love me.”

And I did.

I loved you with the certainty
only a young heart possesses.

The kind of love that believes
if it gives enough,
holds on tightly enough,
it can carry the weight for two people.

I spent years trying.

Until one day
I finally understood
that loving someone
and saving someone
are not the same thing.

So I let go.
At least I told myself I did.
Life moved forward.
Years passed.

But somehow
we never completely left each other behind.

We drifted apart.
We came back.

Again.
And again.

Drawn toward a place
we both knew
could never become a home.

Yet neither of us
could quite bring ourselves
to lock the door.

The last time I saw you
was eight years ago.

One final stolen moment.
One final lie.
One final goodbye
that neither of us knew
was a goodbye.

If I had known,
I would have stayed longer.
I would have listened harder.
I would have memorized everything.

The sound of your voice.
The shape of your smile.
The way you looked at me
when neither of us knew
what to do with all the history
standing between us.

Life continued.
It always does.
But I never stopped loving you.
I never stopped caring.

I never stopped believing
there would be another conversation.
Another chance.
Another day.

There were still things
I wanted to tell you.
Words I carried for years.
Some I regret saying.
Some I regret waiting so long to say.

Now they live beside me,
unfinished.
Permanent residents
of a conversation
that can never be completed.

And perhaps the hardest part
is watching your mother grieve.
Watching her carry a loss
no parent should ever know.

Because her heartbreak
reminds me of something
I spend most days trying not to think about.

We were not ready.
None of us were ready.
Not your mother.
Not your friends.
Not the people who loved you.
Not the people who still speak your name.

We were not prepared
to learn how to live
in a world without you.
And yet somehow
that is exactly what we have been asked to do.

So today I thought about you.
I celebrated your birthday
the only way I know how.

By remembering.
By missing you.
By loving you
from a distance
that death created
but never managed to conquer.

Happy Birthday.
I wish fifty had been yours.
I wish there had been more time.
I wish you were still here.

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