Introduction Echoes of You: A Journey Through Grief and Love

Grief doesn't ask permission. It arrives uninvited-crashing in with the silence after a final breath, with the hollow spaces at dinner tables, with birthdays remembered but never again celebrated in the same way. It speaks in the quiet, in the pause, in the way we catch ourselves looking toward a door that no longer opens. And it stays.

This book was born from those moments. From sleepless nights and trembling hands. From the weight of love that no longer has a body to rest on-but still, somehow, fills the room. Echoes of You is not merely a collection of poems. It is a pilgrimage through memory, mourning, and the unbreakable thread that ties us to those we've loved and lost.

These poems are meant to hold space for your ache. To be a lantern for anyone wandering through the shadows of absence. They are the voice you hear in the wind when no one else is around. The whisper in your chest that tells you they are still here. They are the tears you couldn't cry, and the ones that wouldn't stop. The grief that broke you, and the love that slowly rebuilt you.

Each page holds a breath I once couldn't take. Each verse is a letter I never got to send. Each line is a reaching hand across time.

Some of these poems speak directly to the departed-letters inked in sorrow and sealed with love. Others speak to those left behind, struggling to make sense of a world forever altered. And some are simply moments captured mid-sob, honest and raw, because that's what loss is: beautifully brutal, and brutally beautiful.

You might find yourself weeping here. You might find peace. You might find both-woven together in the strange tapestry of remembrance.

This is for the mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, the friends, lovers, children, and soulmates who are no longer with us in body, but who remain in every thought, breath, and heartbeat. It's for the stories unfinished. For the songs sung to empty rooms. For the hands we can no longer hold, but still feel in ours when the night is quiet enough.

Grief is the price we pay for love. But oh, what a love it was-and still is.

If you are reading this, you have survived the unbearable. You have walked through fire and still found the courage to open a book-to open your heart-once more.

Let these poems walk with you. Let them speak for you. Let them remind you that though love may outlive the body, it never leaves the soul. And that in the echo of every memory, in the hush of every goodbye, there is a forever that cannot die.

With every word, With every tear, With every breath that still remembers-

This book is for you. And for them. They are still here. They always will be.