It clings
a velvet fog inside my chest,
sweet with rot,
syrup-slow and
darker than bone.

I dance,
light candles,
run toward the sun
still it hums
like a second heartbeat
that forgot how to stop.

We burned
not out of hatred
but hunger.
Not to vanish
but to become
smoke
in the same wind.

Love snarls in my chest
a fevered thing,
foaming at the seams,
scratching at ribs like a cage.

It slips to my mouth
I chase it on splintered limbs,
teeth bared,
howling with hunger.

I stitched your name
into the skin of comets,
let galaxies swallow
my wondering.

You move
like a forgotten god
all presence,
no proof.

If I bloom
in the back of your mind,
it is only
as static,
or ash,
or a planet
that never quite formed.

You were a constellation
I tried to hold
in trembling orbit
but gravity,
too desperate,
fractures the sky.

So I learned to love you
like the moon loves the tide
from a distance,
pulling gently,
never asking
you to stay.

Do they ache
in the quiet
where my name once breathed?

Do their shadows stretch
toward mine
in sleep?

Or am I
the only echo
chasing its own sound?

It knocked
softly
a breath at the door
but I
bolted the windows
and swallowed the key.

It came wearing warmth,
but I mistook it
for fire,
for teeth,
for grief with a new face.

So I fled,
faster than joy
could reach out its hand
afraid it might feel
like home.