It rarely arrives
in a single moment,
it gathers in corners,

in unsaid things,

in nights spent

turned the other way,


in coffee gone cold

while silence fills the room,

in laughter you no longer reach for,

in the twitch of a finger
reaching for a wedding band

that isn’t there,
just skin now,

and the echo of a promise.

it settles in the pause

before your name is spoken,
in the hollow of a drawer

still holding the note I wrote you in 2015
in the way light filters in,
but doesn't quite warm
the space they used to fill.

grief is not the breaking,

it's the habit
of touching absence.

If I stay,
it’s not because
I need saving
I now know my own way out

If I stay,
it’s not to repay
kindness with obedience,
or love with sacrifice.

It’s because your touch
brings me back to myself.
It’s because you see me,
and not the echo of your needs

But I won’t stay
if I start shrinking,
if I lose my fire
keeping you warm.

Love, if I stay,
it will be as a whole person,
not a woman folding herself
to fit into you

So if I stay, know this:
It’s not to be yours.
It’s to be mine.

She wrote,
‘Happy New Year’

I stared at the words
long enough to feel
their weight.

So I wrote back,
‘You too’.

But I really meant to say,
‘Happy for who?’

Not me.
Not you.

Today I went looking
through old messages
for the moment
it all began to break

finger-tracing old words
like scars on glass,
hoping one might split open
and finally confess

I guess I am both the surgeon
and the body on the table,
steady hands
- or are they shaking?-

as I open myself
just wide enough
to bleed

I keep searching
for the cracks on
our messages
and our photos,

as if spotting the moment
we stopped smiling
could stitch the wound shut,

But the more I dissect,
the more I bleed,
into the margins
of the autopsy report

Her love was a voice
on the weekends
a phone call
a promise
a breath between meetings

We were raised
by routine hands

Teachers
Father
Babysitters

Borrowing time
And taking turns  
As mother figures

The candlelight 
flickered 

the only witness

to the silence between us

Menus in hand,

but nothing to choose

that we hadn't already tasted

Your eyes

scanned the room
like it might hold
a better version of us.

The waiter brought
two glasses of wine,

and I drank both

as if the bottom
held a reason to stay

Two plates arrived,

and we picked at them,

like archaeologists 
sifting
through remains
of glory days

And when the bill came,

we split it,

as if we'd been rehearsing
how to leave for years.

I kept moving

a blur between places,

names half-learned,

mornings that began

already running

the wind at my back

felt like freedom,
but I never asked

what I was chasing,

or what was chasing me

I kept moving,
avoiding the silence
that carried the questions
I’ve spent a lifetime
outrunning