What Remains
The Gospel They Buried | Poetry
I don’t ask for him anymore.
I just leave the kitchen light on.
I peel an orange over the sink
the way I used to when he was here,
and the smell still finds the place
in me that never closed.
I sleep on one side of the bed
and pretend it’s because I prefer it.
The other side is a country
I can’t get a passport to anymore.
Hunger is a quiet animal.
It learns to wait,
to lie down in the corner
and watch you live your life,
never begging to be fed.
Some nights I almost forget it’s there.
I feel it breathing against my ankle in the dark.
I reach down without looking.
It knows my hand. It should.
I’ve fed it everything
I used to feed him.
© 2025 Katrina Hel. All rights reserved
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It’s one of those poems that hits you quietly, almost before you realize what’s happening. The small details — the orange, the bed, the kitchen light — feel so real that you can almost see the person moving through them, trying to pretend life has settled. What stayed with me most was the way longing becomes this quiet animal in the corner, not demanding anything, just existing. That felt painfully true. The idea of almost forgetting it’s there, only to feel it breathing against you in the dark, is something I think a lot of people know but rarely admit. It’s grief in its most ordinary form, the kind that blends into your routines. By the end, I just felt this soft ache, like watching someone still loving in the only way they can now — by feeding what remains.
The melancholy. It is so simply beautiful. Sending a hug.