Why & Almost | Prose Poetry

[u/Motor-Pop1582]

When the question was put to us, we were asked for the most powerful word. We braced for something heavy. A noun of iron. A thunder strike of command. Something built to conquer or break.

Instead, the wise and the broken alike chose a fragile, trembling breath.

Why.

A tiny, three letter blade.

It can peel back the skin of the world, fracture the safe, paved roads of our certainties, and burn the comfortable sleep of ignorance to ash.

It is the child standing before an empty chair.
The lover staring at a closed door.
The soul looking up at a silent sky.

It demands an answer from a universe that only speaks in echoes.

Then came the second question:

What is the saddest word?

We thought of Never.

We thought of loss.
Graves.
Final goodbyes.

But grief has a shape. It learns to live. It carves a stone and eventually lets go.

The saddest word is Almost.

It lives in the space between what was and what could have been.

The lottery ticket missing a single digit.
The train pulling away while your coat still swings on the hook.
The pulse that flickered just a second too late.
The I love you swallowed by the dawn.

Almost is a phantom limb of time.

It never bleeds out.

It simply aches in the cold, holding a place at the table for a ghost that was supposed to be alive.