I Say Her Name So the World Won’t Forget

I miss her most in the quiet.

Not in the big public moments; though those break me too,
but in the ordinary hours when the world keeps spinning
and my daughter’s name goes unsaid.

That’s the part no one really prepares you for. Grief isn’t only about losing someone.
It’s the ache that comes with the fear everyone else will forget them.

People think I write because I’m brave.
I don’t.

I write because I’m terrified.

Terrified that one day her laugh will blur at the edges of memory,
that someone will say her name and no one will recognise the story behind it,
that the small, ridiculous things that were hers; the hair in her scrunchy, the way she said “Love you, Mama” will slip away.

So, I keep her here. In ink. In breath. In pixels and pages.
In every sentence I press into the world I am whispering:
She was here. She mattered. Please don’t forget.

Sometimes it’s quieter than a whisper. Sometimes I am furious.
I’ll burn the world down before I let her name be forgotten.

(And then I make a cup of coffee because fury needs fuel and life keeps asking for small practical things.)

Sometimes it feels like carrying a candle against the wind.
Sometimes it’s shouting her name into a room that’s already moved on.

But I do it anyway.

Because love doesn’t end when a heartbeat stops.
Because grief is devotion wearing a wound.
Because saying her name is the only way I know how to keep breathing.

So if you’re still here reading this, thank you.
For remembering with me. For keeping her real. For letting my girl live a little longer in your heart.

Kahlia.
Kahlia.
Kahlia.

I’ll keep saying it, for as long as I have a voice.