Category: Poems

I have celebrated your faith.
This year, honour my grief.
Do not mistake my exhaustion for indifference.

I have stood beside you every year.
I have honoured your festivals.
I have shown up for your faith even when it was not mine.
I have lit the lights,
shared the meals,
folded my disbelief into respect —
because love does that.

Love makes room.

But this year, my house smells of antiseptic and fear.
This year, celebration tastes like blood from a tumour that will not stop bleeding.
This year, I am not simply “busy” or “moody” or “withdrawn.”

I am bracing.

On 26 January, I buried Zach.
Before my heart has learnt that new silence,
I am watching Xena fade.

Cancer does not wait for calendars.
Grief does not consult festivals.

You say I celebrated Christmas when Zach was terminal.
No.
I hoped Christmas would lighten my grief.
But there is a difference between lighting a tree and feeling light.
There is a difference between attending a party and inhabiting joy.
There is a difference between functioning and celebrating.

I took that tree down before the year even turned. You didn’t remember that, did you?
I smiled because promises had been made.
I showed up because responsibility demanded it.
But inside, I was already saying goodbye.

And now you ask why I cannot summon the same performance again.
Because I am tired of performing strength.
Especially not for you.

Even if you are not an animal lover, you know what they are to me.
You have seen the tumours.
You have seen the bandages.
You have seen me kneel on the floor dabbing blood past midnight.

You have watched me carry the quiet terror of “will today be the day?”
You do not have to love dogs the way I do.
But as my partner, you must know what this love costs me.

This is not about Eid.
It is not about a tailor.
It is not about a birthday cake.

It is about capacity.
Grief shrinks the lungs.
It narrows the world.
It makes joy something you sip carefully,
not something you pour freely.

My therapist tells me: take it a day at a time.
Take the smiles when they come.
Do not drown in tomorrow before it arrives.

So yes — I may laugh at a birthday.
I may sit with someone I call sister and feel warmth.
Because survival sometimes looks like borrowing light.

But that does not mean I am available for spectacle.
As my spouse, I do not want comparison.
I do not want accounting.

I want empathy.
Not understanding in theory.
Empathy in practice.
Empathy that says:

“You do not owe the world festivity while you are fighting loss.”

“Your grief is not inconvenient.”

“I will not compete with your sorrow.”

“I will stand beside it.”

I have celebrated your faith for years.
This year, I expected you to
Honour my grief.

Sit with me in the antiseptic silence.
Hold me when I break at 2 am.
Let me be inconsistent.
Let me be human.

Because partnership is not tested in festivity.
It is tested in funerals we see coming.