I dreamed he was just sitting at a table

I dreamed he was just sitting at a table.

That was all. Nothing happened.

He was there, existing, his hands

on the surface of the table, his face

neutral. Ordinary. The wrongness

of it woke me up—

not the fear, not the nightmare,

but the simplicity of him being alive,

just sitting, doing nothing,

which is worse than any version

of him I've constructed in waking hours,

worse than the elaborate goodbyes

I've rehearsed in my head.

In the dream he was just a person

at a table, and that was enough

to break something in me.

I lay there after waking,

trying to hold the image,

knowing it would fade,

knowing that the worst part of grief

is not the drama, not the falling apart,

but the mundane moment of someone

who used to matter, just

sitting somewhere, existing without you.