A year ago

 A year ago, I held you for the last time —

heart shaking,
hands trembling,
hoping love alone might keep you here.

It didn’t.
But love didn’t leave with you either.

This is the First Angel Anniversary —
365 days of waking up without your footsteps,
of opening the door to find only air,
of reaching for what memory holds
but hands can no longer touch.

I won’t pretend it was easy.
Grief rearranged me.
It remade my mornings,
my habits,
the shape of my heart.

But somehow, in that ache,
a quieter truth emerged:

You never fully left.

You stayed in the places where love roots deeply —
in the corners of the house you claimed as home,
in the way sunlight still lands softly on your old bed,
in the reflex of my breath
when I speak your name with both pain and gratitude.

A year without you,
yet every day with you still.

You are part of my seasons now —
spring’s tender remembering,
summer’s warm ache,
autumn’s deep reflection,
winter’s quiet missing.

I light a candle for you today,
not because I lost you,
but because I continue to love you.

One year taught me this:

You are not gone.
You have simply changed your place in my life —
from beside me to within me.
From pawprints on the floor
to pawprints in my soul.

So I honor you —
my first Angel Anniversary,
my forever friend,
my love that never had an ending.

Time moved.
Love stayed.
And your light still finds me
in the gentle ways that matter most.