Six Feet and 6 Yrs

He died six years ago. The wind has only just turned and carried it to your window.

You mistook motion for morning.

Because the boots still walked. Because the mouth still opened— wind touring the rooms of a house nobody lives in. Because the lungs went on lifting and lowering their small tide.

And you called that living.

But breath is not proof. The body keeps its ritual the way a clock keeps time in a house sold years ago.

Every wound, a bell in a tower. Every betrayal, a spade of earth. Every cruel word, a nail set patiently into the coffin of the man he was still trying to save.

A candle drowned, relit by trembling hands, lit only so you could lean close and take the light back into your lungs.

Slowly he forgot the taste of morning. Forgot the sound a door makes when hope is on the other side. Forgot what warmth was before every sunrise began arriving dressed as a sunset.

And still—God, how he tried.

He gathered himself like broken glass beneath a moonless sky and cut his hands on the man he used to be. He gathered the ash of his spirit and whispered: rise.

But resurrection is not a whisper. It is thunder taking a tomb apart at the hinges. It is fire walking into dead bone.

And you had taken that strength from him too many times to count.

You killed the bird first— the small impossible one that kept singing with blood on its wings. Then the cathedral of glass where he still believed something sacred could be housed. Then the garden, petal by petal, until tenderness was ash on your shoe.

Again. And again. And again, until even death lost count and left the door standing open.

Until nothing in him could stand— only dust, remembering it once had wings.

And now you call him toxic.

As though the poison walked in on its own. As though you had not poured your grief into every river of him and then stepped back when the water ran black.

Once, his heart was a war drum. Now it is an ember under a winter stone— not dead enough to vanish, not alive enough to warm a room.

There is no reaching anymore. No hands coming up through the earth like roots asking the sun to remember their address. No bargaining with tomorrow.

He has stopped trying to raise the man you kept taking down.

And there is a peace in that. A terrible peace.

Not dramatic. Not screaming. Quietly— the way October lets go without a word to the branches, the way a ruin stops asking when the builders are coming back.

And you stand over what is left and ask, when did he die?

Six years ago.

Perhaps when the first spade of your cruelty broke the ground and he understood you were not digging beside him.

You were digging for him.

Everything after was the body taking its time to understand.

And you— you have only just now turned your head toward the smell.

He died six years ago. The wind has only just turned and carried it to your window.

You mistook motion for morning.

Because the boots still walked— a shadow keeping the shape its owner had abandoned. Because the mouth still opened— wind touring the empty rooms of a house nobody lives in. Because the lungs, out of habit or out of mercy, went on lifting and lowering their small tide.

And you called that living.

But breath is not proof. The body keeps its ritual long after the soul has gone, the way a clock keeps time in a house sold years ago. A heartbeat can be nothing more than flesh refusing to finish the sentence death began.

Each time you drew the blade across the soft country of him, a border moved. Each time, another province of his name went dark.

A candle drowned in water, relit by trembling hands, lit only so you could lean close and take the light back into your lungs.

Every wound, a bell in a tower. Every betrayal, a spade of earth. Every cruel word, a nail set patiently into the coffin of the man he was still trying to save.

Slowly, he forgot the taste of morning. Forgot the sound a door makes when hope is on the other side. Forgot what warmth was before every sunrise began arriving dressed as a sunset.

And still—God, how he tried to raise himself.

He went through the ruin on his knees looking for pieces of his old name. Gathered himself like broken glass beneath a moonless sky and cut his hands on the man he used to be.

He pressed those hands into the open mouths of his wounds and asked them, please, to close.

He gathered the ash of his spirit and whispered: rise.

He asked his heart to remember its music— one note, any note.

But resurrection is not a whisper.

It is thunder taking a tomb apart at the hinges. It is fire walking into dead bone. It is the stone giving up and the morning coming in anyway. It is a holy violence done to the certainty of death.

And you had taken that strength from him too many times to count.

You killed the bird first— the small impossible one that kept trying to sing with blood on its wings.

Then the cathedral— that trusting architecture of glass where he still believed something sacred could be housed.

Then the garden— the softness of him, petal by petal, until tenderness was only ash on your shoe.

Again. And again. And again, until even death lost count and left the door standing open.

Until nothing in him was strong enough to stand— only dust, remembering it once had wings.

And now you call him toxic.

As though the poison walked in on its own. As though you had not poured your grief into every river of him and then stepped back when the water ran black.

What did you expect from a man kept six years beneath the soil of your making?

The rivers in him no longer carry spring. They carry the end of things— ink-dark current, the silt of old betrayals, the rust of promises left out in the weather, water leaking slow from wounds that waited so long they learned to call themselves a permanent address.

Once, his heart was a war drum. It thundered at the dark. It beat its fists on the door of his ribs and demanded another year.

Now it is an ember under a winter stone. Not dead enough to vanish. Not alive enough to warm a room.

There is no reaching anymore.

No hands coming up through the earth like roots asking the sun to remember their address. No prayers scratched into the walls of the grave. No bargaining with tomorrow. No hunger for another chance at becoming.

He has stopped trying to raise the man you kept taking down.

And there is a peace in that. A terrible peace.

He lies quiet now in the grave you carved out of his body, no longer confusing survival with living, no longer taking silence for hope, no longer laying two fingers on an empty chest listening for a pulse in the grammar of absence.

Perhaps that is the cruelest part.

He has accepted it.

Not dramatically. Not with screaming. Not with one final collapse.

Quietly.

The way evening accepts the dark. The way October lets go without a word to the branches. The way a ruin finally stops asking when the builders are coming back.

He looked into himself the way a stranger looks into a shattered mirror, and found only pieces— echoes wearing his face, ghosts carrying his memories, the faint outline of a name he no longer turns around for.

So the wind has reached you.

And you stand over what is left and ask, when did he die?

Six years ago.

Perhaps with the first wound.

Perhaps with the first betrayal he forgave, because he still believed love could keep a house inside a burning house.

Perhaps when the first spade of your cruelty broke the ground and he understood you were not digging beside him.

You were digging for him.

He died six years ago.

Everything after was the body taking its time to understand.

And you— you have only just now turned your head toward the smell.