There’s dust on her shoes,

by the door that’s still closed.

Her coat’s on the hook,

like she’s coming back home.

The light in the hallway

still flickers at night,

but she’s not in her room

and nothing feels right.

She was five when she whispered

“Daddy, don’t cry.”

I held her too tight

as they told me goodbye.

The cancer had stolen

what I couldn't defend.

And silence moved in

where her laughter had been.

So I sit in the room where she was,

her drawings still taped to the walls.

There’s a bear in the bed

and a ghost in my head

and I talk to the air when I fall.

No one should have to survive

the day that their child says goodbye.

And I swear, I still hear her sing

in the room…

in the room where she was.

There’s a man on the corner

with nowhere to go,

his wife died last winter

in the cold and the snow.

He speaks to a photo

he keeps in his coat,

asks it each night

if it still remembers hope.

There's a letter unopened

from a son lost to war,

and a mother who waits

by a silent front door.

Every line is a wound,

every word is a knife.

And the ink never dries

on a page of lost lives.

So we sit in the rooms where they were,

with the clocks that forgot how to turn.

We keep talking to chairs,

to the ghosts that aren’t there,

lighting candles that never quite burn.

No one should have to stay

when the love of their life fades away.

But we do, and we break, and we pray

in the rooms…

in the rooms where they were.

So hold who you love

like the world ends tonight.

Some goodbyes are forever,

and some never feel right.

And if you ask me what sorrow becomes—

it's the silence...

in the room where she was.