"Tuesday Morning" by Isha Hussein

Have you ever felt so lost in your sadness that it wraps around you like chains, suffocating every breath, until you forget what it feels like to breathe without it? The weight of it is unshakable and has become a part of you, so constant that you no longer remember the taste of happiness.

That's how I feel.

It was Tuesday morning, a day that started like any other. But then you were there, your brown skin like dusk settling over warm stone, your dark hair spilling around you, casting shadows where light should have been. Your smile, quiet, soft, unfolded like a sunrise over distant hills. In that moment, I didn't know it would be the last time. Your eyes met mine, a promise I thought would last forever. Isn't it strange how we understand the concept of death but don't truly know it until it steals someone from us?

How does something without a face, without form or warning, still manage to take everything we love? Death doesn't knock—it drips in through the cracks, invisible but unstoppable, naming no one yet claiming everyone. We get so caught up in our daily lives that we believe death is distant, unreal, maybe we know it exists, but we tuck it into the back of our minds, unprepared. Did your body give you any signs that it would be your last day? Maybe that's the cruelest joke of life, not knowing.

It was Tuesday morning, the 13th, when I saw you. You were happy, and so was I. It felt like your presence could erase everything negative about life. But all of that disappeared in the blink of an eye. It was Tuesday when the reality I knew turned into a nightmare. And you want to know the hardest part? Speaking in the past tense, having to face the reality of not having you in this world we call life. Maybe if I keep talking about you in the present tense, I can delay reality. As if I could bargain with God to bring you back. As if using the present tense allows me to live in the past, a time when you were still here.

People share their condolences, but what good are words if they don't bring the dead back?

Maybe they say those things to ease their own guilt, for not knowing what this feels like, for never having carried this kind of weight. They say they're there for you, but they leave before the dirt settles, before you've had time to dry your eyes or whisper a final prayer. They expect you to be okay and to carry on as if nothing happened. They expect you to be happy again.

But who's there when you're reliving memories that shatter you? When looking at pictures becomes unbearable? When your mind turns against you, becomes a haunted house you can't escape, every hallway echoing with moments you'd give anything to relive, every room wallpapered with what-ifs and should-haves? When you force yourself to remember their face,

their voice, even when it hurts, because forgetting feels like a second death? When the past refuses to let go, and the present slips through your fingers like sand?

People act like you're supposed to be okay, as if the ground beneath you hasn't cracked wide open. They expect healing to follow a timeline, as if grief is something you can check off. But all I feel is the fire of anger, burning through my chest, and the silence they left behind.

What they don't see— what they can't feel— is the exact moment your world ends. It was Tuesday, the 13th of May, when two people died that night. You— physically— cold, lifeless, your body already a stranger. And me—spiritually—frozen, shackled by that moment, stuck in time, never ready to let go. I hate May 13th. I hate how it comes every year like nothing happened, like the world didn't shatter that day. I hate it not because I might forget, but because I always remember. And maybe grief is just love that refuses to surrender. And maybe if I close my eyes long enough, I'll wake up and find you still here.