No Cracks, No Warnings

We are all just particles 

blurred at the edges,

never fully here or there

At any moment we might stay,

or leave,

or hover in the in-between

Because choosing is hard,

and certainty was never promised

Most of us are afraid

of what waits on the other side

We orbit it,

invent stories,

pretend we’re ready

when we aren’t

We cling to this side of the barrier

as if holding tighter

might bend 

the laws of the universe.

But you?

you spoke of it

not with dread,

but with that sharp, lit-up mind,

that way you had

of making the infinite

feel almost within reach

And then, it happened.

Not a grand event

Not a flash of light

Just the barrier giving way

quietly, inevitably.

letting you through

No crack, no sound,  no warning

Only the space where you stood

and the unbearable knowing

that you were already gone

Now you see us,

and we cannot see you.

Your intelligence, your humor,

your whole electric presence

slipped through the wall

clean, sudden, still

Into a place

our hands and our questions

cannot reach

Quantum tunneling, like death,

is no magic; merely a rule that holds

whether we understand it or not:

a barrier, an energy,

and the moment someone we love

passes through it

while we remain; pounding at a surface

that never yields, never even ripples

One instant, you were here.

The next: part of a silence

so vast, it collapses the air around it

And we keep breathing

on this side of the wall,

because there is nothing else to do

While you? you travel, 

to wherever particles go

when they do not return

and make sunlight happen