Shifting Slowly

They say signs aren’t real.
That we invent them
to soften the blow.

But today I was thinking of you—
not gently.
Not nostalgically.
I was inside it again.

Your breath tearing in and out.
Your hand groping for Mom’s arm
like it was the last railing
on a collapsing bridge.
That stubborn fire in you—
still burning
in a body already leaving.

We bent close and lied through love.
“Go, Pa.
We’ll be fine.
We’ll take care of her.”
Our voices broke in half,
but the promise didn’t.

I was walking when it ambushed me—
the whole scene
rising like floodwater.
I kept saying your name in my head
as if repetition
could keep you from disappearing.

And then—

there it was.

In a place so empty
even a lost coin would feel miraculous,
a pack of cigarettes.
Your brand.
The one you cracked open
with two hard taps of your thumb.
The sound of it
still lives in my bones.

Tell me that’s nothing.
Tell me that’s coincidence.

Maybe you are nowhere.
Maybe you are everywhere.
Maybe the dead don’t send messages
and we just bleed meaning onto the pavement.

But you were supposed to stay.
You were supposed to see their faces grow.
To spin Mom once more in the kitchen,
slow and off-beat.
To ruin the punchline of your own joke
because you couldn’t wait to laugh.

Instead, I find your ghost
in a crumpled box of cigarettes
on an ordinary street.

Small.
Ridiculous.
Holy.

And for one fractured moment,
it felt like you
reaching back.