There are some loves that never leave the room, even when the person does.
This poem is for anyone who has ever reached into an empty kitchen and still felt warmth. Who has caught themselves folding towels the same way, or found their heart beating to a rhythm that was first taught by love.
Loss doesn’t silence that bond…
it transforms it into echo, ritual, and the quiet kind of forever that hums through the smallest parts of life.
“Where Her Hands Still Are”
By: Axton N. O. Mitchell
I still hear her in the quiet,
her quiet giggle.
A low hum the house learned from her,
The lines around her mouth,
soft percussion of spoons on porcelain,
Her sigh as the curtains breath with the wind.
She was the kind of gentle
that never had to announce it existed;
you just felt it.
In the way light hit the kitchen table,
Or how your shoulders settled
when she walked into a room.
She always swayed,
and somehow, it made everything feel safe.
Now every sound leans toward memory.
The kettle whistles her name,
the wind carries faint notes of her perfume,
and every dawn feels a little more unsure
how to begin without her.
Her hands made warmth
out of thin air and love.
Even the dust knew her touch.
I fold laundry the way she did,
sleeves tucked in, corners neat
a quiet ritual…
to keep my world from unraveling.
Grief doesn’t shout anymore;
it lingers in the shadows,
breathes through the walls,
sits down beside me at dinner
every single night,
waiting for me to notice.
I talk to her often…
just not out loud.
I
I find her in the places silence but quiet best:
the garden,
the car,
anywhere I know she lingers.
Life goes on, yes,
but oh so differently,
like a song missing its first note.
Yet her love hums underneath it all,
steady, ancient,
woven into everything I touch.
Even gone,
she’s everywhere.
She is the steam of morning tea,
the lilac scent after rain.
I feel her in the echo of my own heartbeat,
After all it learned its rhythm from hers.
Her absence will always ache,
but the ache itself is proof,
she’s still here.
She is woven into the pulse of every moment I’m still living.
Love doesn’t end when the heartbeat stops;
it just finds new ways to hum.
Poet’s Note:
I wrote Where Her Hands Still Are after realizing that grief isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s patient. It waits, hums, and reminds you that love this deep doesn’t vanish. It simply reshapes itself. You don’t ever lose a mother completely; you just start learning to speak in her silence.
