Grief Never Ends

[Verse 1]
Grief never ends
It never expires
It sits at the same table
In a chair no one else can use
You don’t pack it in boxes
You don’t move it to storage
It lives in your ribcage
Like a second set of lungs
That only inhales when you’re alone
You don’t forget who’s missing
You just get better
At carrying their shadow
Beside your own
[Chorus]
It hits out of nowhere
A smell in a hallway
A song in a store
An old sweater in the wrong drawer
And you’re gone
Floor rushing up
Air ripped clean
From your open mouth
Grief never ends
It just changes weight
Some days a stone in your pocket
Some days a wave over your head
[Verse 2]
People ask how you’re doing
You say
“I’m fine”
Because there isn’t language
For being half here
Half history
You laugh at a joke
Then hate yourself for laughing
As if joy were betrayal
As if their memory needed your misery to survive
But love is what hurts
That’s the secret curse and blessing
If they hadn’t mattered this much
You wouldn’t be shattered this deeply
[Chorus]
It hits out of nowhere
Standing in line
Reaching for milk
Seeing their brand on the shelf
And you’re back
In that hospital room
That phone call
That last message you replay and replay
Grief never ends
It just changes shape
Some days a whisper in traffic
Some days a scream in your bones
[Bridge]
Listen
You are not weak for falling
You are not broken for breaking again
This is how a heart remembers
You don’t “move on”
You move with
One hand holding the future
One hand holding what you can’t touch anymore
If you’re on the floor
Struggling for breath
Know this:
You’re still here because love anchored you that deep
[Chorus]
It hits out of nowhere
A quiet Sunday
An empty chair
Their cup still on the shelf
And you bend
But you stand
You gasp
But you breathe again
Grief never ends
It just changes place
From a wound you can’t look at
To a scar you trace in the dark
And every time it knocks you down
Every stolen breath
Is proof of this simple
Brutal fact:
They were real
They were yours
They still are
In the space grief keeps for love

Spare piano chords under intimate male spoken word, close-mic and dry. Very slow tempo with soft, distant pads swelling on key phrases. Sub-bass swells and faint reversed textures underline the heaviest lines; final chorus adds low, stacked whispers as a ghostly harmony, then everything drops to a single heartbeat-like pulse and a dry voice for the last words., spoken word, emotional