My heart still answers you

 My heart still answers you…

Even now.
Even after goodbye.
Even after the silence settled into this house like something permanent.
Sometimes I still say your name out loud without thinking.
And every single time… something inside me reacts before reality can catch up.
My heart still expects you.
Still waits for the sound of paws racing toward me.
Still listens for your collar in the quiet.
Still believes, for one impossible second, that you’re just in the other room.
That’s what love does.
It rewires the soul around someone.
You became part of my rhythm.
Part of my everyday life in ways I never fully noticed until the world suddenly became so unbearably still without you in it.
I miss the smallest things the most.
The way you followed me from room to room like my shadow.
The sleepy stretches you made every morning.
The warmth of your body resting against my legs while the rain tapped softly against the windows at night.
You made ordinary life feel safe.
And losing you made ordinary life hurt.
Sometimes I sit quietly and hold your collar against my chest just to remember the sound it used to make.
That tiny jingle.
That tiny beautiful reminder that I was loved by someone whose entire heart belonged to me.
No conditions.
No pretending.
No complicated words.
Just love.
Pure and loyal and endless.
I think part of me will always keep answering you.
In the way I still glance toward the door expecting you to appear.
In the way tears still arrive when I see dogs that move like you did.
In the way my soul still reaches for yours during lonely nights.
But maybe that connection isn’t broken at all.
Maybe somewhere beyond the Rainbow Bridge, beneath skies glowing with stars and soft rainbow light, you still hear me too. 
Maybe when I whisper your name into the quiet… your spirit still turns toward me with that same loving look in your eyes.
And maybe that’s why my heart still answers you after all this time.
Because love this deep never truly learns how to stop.