Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
There is a crack
in the ceiling
I had never noticed before.
I know where it begins.
I know where it ends.
I have followed it
a thousand times
with eyes
that have forgotten
what they are looking for.
Outside,
the world continues.
Cars pass.
Children grow.
Someone falls in love.
Someone makes plans
for a summer
they believe
will come.
And I lie here.
Morning.
Evening.
Morning again.
The light moves
across the walls,
and I watch it
without wondering
where it goes.
There are things
I should be doing.
People
I should be calling.
A life
I should be living.
But the hours
have become
something that happens
to me.
Not something
I am part of.
And somewhere
beyond these walls,
the seasons change.
The trees surrender
their leaves.
The earth grows cold.
The days grow longer
and shorter
and longer again.
And still,
I am here.
Staring at the ceiling.
I used to think
time was something
we moved through.
Now I know
it can move
without us.
That whole months
can disappear
while a heart
remains
in a single afternoon.
I cannot remember
what I did yesterday.
Or the day before.
Only that I woke,
and you were gone.
And then I woke again.
And you were still gone.
And somehow
this was enough
to fill an entire life.
There is no great revelation
waiting in the silence.
No beautiful lesson
beneath the sorrow.
Only the slow,
unremarkable cruelty
of another day
arriving
without you.
And another.
And another.
Until I begin
to understand
that the world
will never stop
to mourn
what it has lost.
That the sun
will rise
a thousand times
without asking
whether I can bear
to see it.
That the seasons
will keep changing.
That people
will keep living.
And that someday,
someone will ask
what I have been doing
all this time.
And I will have
no answer.
Because the days
have passed.
The months
have passed.
And I have done
nothing
but lie here,
learning
how long
forever is.
With my eyes
on the ceiling,
and my heart
still somewhere
in the day
you left.
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Poetry by Britt Wolfe:
What happens when the world keeps moving, but grief leaves you stranded in the moment everything changed? Staring at the Ceiling is a hauntingly intimate exploration of the quiet paralysis that follows profound loss, when days dissolve into weeks, seasons change without consequence, and life becomes something that happens around us rather than something we participate in. It captures the unbearable monotony of waking each morning to the same devastating absence, the loneliness of watching a world that has already moved on, and the terrible realization that time does not wait for broken hearts to heal. For anyone who has ever lost entire days to sorrow, only to discover that the hardest part of grief isn't watching time pass, but knowing that every passing moment carries us further from the last time someone we loved was still here.