This year carries loss like a satchel of shadows.
It lets itself in—I hear its keys rattle in my bones,
its shoes wet with graveyard grass.
I long to be angry, yet I am strangely understanding.
Why do you wear the coats of my beloved?
Why fold their laughter into my sleeves?
Loss, you puzzle me.
I do not know if I should set you a place at the table
or bar the door.
You are a thief that lingers,
a guest that never leaves.
Your silence carves sermons in my ribs.
You did not ask to be here,
as I did not ask to be left in silence.
You move through the rooms,
breathing where laughter once lived,
dragging your silence across the floorboards
until the whole house hums with absence.
Oh, loss—
you let me grieve at the bone.
Tell me truly:
have you made your bed in mine,
or will you let yourself out soon?
Do not baptize me in your departure.
I implore you:
be gentle, show mercy.
Do not teach my hands the shape of yours
if you do not plan to sit at this table.
Your sermon is clear:
that all who are cherished will vanish from here,
that promise is fleeting, that bodies decay,
that names in the marrow are carried away.
Forget, if you must—forgetting is free.
But absence remembers.
And absence keeps me.
Shani Barnard is a South African writer who experiences life with vivid intensity and translates that into emotionally charged, lyrical work. She writes to make sense of beauty, pain, and memory—crafting poems that invite readers to feel as deeply as she does. Her work is an act of romantic defiance in a hardened world. She has been published in literary magazines and is currently working on her first chapbook.