Low Grade Fever

It feels like craving mixed with restlessness. Every day the sensation arrives and I try to solve it. Cooking favorite foods. Visiting places that used to bring me joy. Searching for…something but never quite finding it.

I keep trying to soothe a feeling I cannot name.

This is grief. It has just changed shape. It no longer arrives as sharp devastation, but as an unnamed ache. A longing for something long gone.

The grief no longer feels like a body being riddled with bullets. Instead it’s more like a low-grade fever. The kind of thing that goes unnoticed because, from the outside, I’m functioning. Answering emails. Showing up. Laughing at the right moments.

But internally, something is off.

I wonder if what I’m really reaching for is my mother.

Not just her, but everything a mother is. Safety. Witnessing. Unconditional familiarity and being known without explanation.

Maybe this new grief is partially the realization that there are certain forms of comfort the world never fully replaces. And maybe that is why the yearning feels impossible to satisfy. Because I am not craving a place or a meal or a distraction.

I am craving a feeling. A person. A version of being held that no longer exists in the same form.

Like reaching for a phantom limb.