1. Let it happen.
Hold the weight like water.
Watch it slip between your fingers,
because it will.
(It’s supposed to slip.)
2.Name it.
Call the ache by its true name.
Say: this is grief.
Say: this is love without its home.
Say it into the mirror until it feels real like the air you breathe.
3.Build rituals.
Light a candle in the morning.
Burn the edges of a photograph,
not to forget, but to honor.
Make offerings of time:
a walk, a prayer,
a song on repeat.
4.Talk to the empty spaces.
Let your voice fill the silence in rooms that never asked for it.
Say: I miss you.
Say: I don’t know how to keep living,
but I am trying.
The walls will listen.
The walls have always listened.
5.Learn patience.
Wait for the day when breathing feels normal again.
(It will come.) Wait for the day when a memory
doesn’t crack you open.
Let the hours pass without counting.
6.Accept imperfection.
Healing won’t arrive dressed in white.
It will crawl on its hands and knees.
It will look like forgetting, sometimes.
(You won’t be ready, but it will come anyway.)
7.(but can you?)
(is it even possible to hold loss without it breaking?)
(what does “master” even mean––)
(what does it mean to master loss,
when the loss has mastered you?)
(why does it feel like I’m still sinking—)
8.(wait, no, go back. start over. I mean—
light a candle. name it. tell the walls but they just
echo, and what if that’s all there is? what if I
never learn how to stop? what if—)
9.Carry it—
(no. forget carrying. it carries you.)
(is this step seven? or eight? what step am I on when the steps don’t—)
10.Hold on until—
Emily Liu is a poet and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work explores the liminal spaces of identity, memory, and transformation. When she’s not writing, she enjoys curating Spotify playlists and roaming the city with friends in search of the perfect boba spot.