After The Weight Settles

The house is quiet now, the echo of the door still rings
Your footsteps down the hall, the last of everything
I sit in the living room where the light is turning low
The furniture remembers where we used to go
The silence has a weight that presses on my chest
A heaviness that's gentle but refuses to let rest
I breathe it in and feel it settle in my bones
A quiet kind of pressure that finally feels like home

After the weight settles
Soft lies in the calm that follows the storm
Hard goodbyes in the shape the silence forms
After the weight settles
Everything is still, but nothing is the same
The air is thick with what we couldn't name

I walk through empty rooms, touch the places you would stand
The coffee cup you left, the imprint of your hand
The clock keeps moving forward, but time has lost its pace
A slow deceleration in this unfamiliar space
I lie down in the bed where your side is cold and wide
The sheets still hold the outline of the nights we tried
The weight is not the leaving, it's the staying that's the cost
The gravity of absence when the fight is lost

After the weight settles
Soft lies in the calm that follows the storm
Hard goodbyes in the shape the silence forms
After the weight settles
Everything is still, but nothing is the same
The air is thick with what we couldn't name

Morning comes too softly, light creeping through the blinds
I open my eyes slowly to the life I left behind
The weight is still there waiting, patient as the dawn
A gentle kind of anchor now that you are gone