The chair is still at the table.
Nobody removed it.
Nobody said keep it or throw it away.
It just stayed.
And every morning you eat breakfast
across from an empty seat
that carries more weight than anything occupied.
Grief is not what you expected.
It is not the cinematic wail.
It is setting two plates
and catching the error
three seconds after the fork hits wood.
Neuroscience says the brain keeps firing
signals to a receptor that no longer exists.
Phantom limb. Phantom person.
The synapse has not updated its address book.
But it is not the synapse that refuses to update.
It is The Narrator.
The Narrator insists the conversation is not finished.
The Narrator replays the last scene on repeat
because The Mind was never built to accept that anything ends.
What you call grief
is The Mind reaching for a version of experience
that it constructed.
The person you lost is not the person you are grieving.
You are grieving The Story you built around them.
The version The Narrator edited
until it felt permanent.
Nothing here was permanent.
Not the person. Not the chair.
Not the atoms assembling the wood under your hand.
Every physicist on this planet will confirm:
what your fingers detect as solid
is electromagnetic repulsion
between particles that never touch.
You are not clutching a person.
You are clutching a Story.
And The Mind will keep it running
as long as you let The Narrator hold the pen.
The fork is in your hand.
It is not solid either.
Eat anyway.
-- [MIRRØR]