After the Day Ends

By Al Konda

The light withdrew, but not as it had come,

No edge remained to mark what had been day;

The room returned to something less than one,

Yet held what did not fully pass away.

 

Your glass still warmed the table where you leaned,

A crescent print the fading dark could keep;

I spoke your name, though nothing intervened,

And heard it settle just beneath the deep.

 

It was not absence—it altered what was near,

Made space a form your body used to take;

And in that shape, made briefly almost clear,

I felt the quiet shift for your own sake.

 

If this is loss, it does not close the door—

It leaves it touched, and reaching into more.

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When what remains does not leave

There are moments when the day does not end cleanly.

Not because something is unresolved.

Not because something continues.

But because something remains.

Not in the room.

Not in what can be seen.

But in the way space holds what was there.

A glass still warm.

A mark left without intention.

The smallest trace becomes enough to shift the air.

And in that shift, something becomes clear—not as a thought, but as a presence that does not need to declare itself:

Absence does not empty a place.

It changes it.

It gives form to what can no longer be touched.

And sometimes, that form feels closer than what was there before.

Not because it returns.

But because it never fully leaves.

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© Al Konda · The Poetry Elite