All Roads Leads to loml

All roads lead to you—
not in the way maps promise arrival,
but in the way grief redraws every street
until there is nowhere else to go.

I take the long way home now,
as if distance could dull memory,
as if the body could forget
what it learned by heart.

There’s a café I haven’t stepped into since,
the window still catching light the same way,
chairs still tucked in like nothing happened—
but I pass it like it might recognize me,
like it might say your name out loud.

Every place is a before.
Before songs turned traitor,
before even the air
started to feel like it was missing you.

They say time reroutes you,
that eventually you’ll find new roads,
new cities, new light—
but they don’t tell you
how every new street still leads to you,
how every unfamiliar sky
feels like it’s been emptied of something.

All roads lead to the loss of my life—
a slow erasing,
a steady unmaking
of who I was when you loved me.

I tried to outrun it once,
packed my things into a moving car,
watched the skyline shrink in the rearview—
but grief doesn’t stay behind.
It rides shotgun,
points out landmarks you wish you didn’t recognize.

“Here,” it says,
“this is where you were happiest.”
And you don’t remember the moment—
only the absence of it.

Even now,
I avoid the places that still hold your outline,
as if memory were something contagious,
as if I could catch you again
just by standing where you stood.

But absence is stubborn.
It lingers in doorways,
in late afternoon light,
in the space beside me
that refuses to be just space.

All roads lead to you—
or maybe to the version of me
that only existed in your eyes.

And I don’t know which loss hurts more:
that you’re gone,
or that I am too.