The day they took him, something in me broke. I watched my grandson’s face pressed against the car window, his mouth forming my name, and I could do nothing. No judge heard my heart. No paper cared that he still slept with the nightlight I bought him. Years passed in a cruel, echoing si…
I lived inside the ache of his absence, moving through rooms that still remembered him. His shoes by the door. His drawings on the fridge. The small bed made every morning, waiting for a boy who never walked back in. People told me to “accept it,” to move on, but love doesn’t follow court orders. It lingers in the quiet, in the habits you can’t bring yourself to break.