I dreamed us a house,
its bones a lattice of whispered vows,
its roof stitched with the threads
of our laughter, thick as stars.
The floors hummed with the weight of mornings,
two cups, one kettle—
the orchestras of a life together.

But you, my phantom architect,
forgot the plans, or perhaps
burned them in a garden I will never see.
I drew blueprints in my sleep,
measuring the spaces
between what we had and what you wanted.

I held a window to your face—
"See, here is the sun we were to share."
But your eyes were rain-soaked stones,
fixed on an horizon
where no house stood, no promise lingered.
Did you ever want it?
Or did my dreams merely sprawl
too wide, too weighty for your quiet compass?

Now I walk alone
through the ruins of this imaginary place,
longing for your footprints in the dust,
wishing you could see
the cathedral I built in your name.
But the silence tells me
you never prayed here,
and perhaps never will.

Still, I carve your absence
into every unspoken room,
this house that was never built.
Its ghost towers above me,
aching, eternal,
a monument to my dreams unshared.

It wasn't just a sound;
it was a map,
leading to a world
I thought we would build -
a world where her laugh
would echo down the corridors of our home.
spilling into the rooms
where children would learn
the magic of their mother's joy

Her laughter -
was color and warmth to the walls
of gray stone.

A pebble skipping over still waters,
shaking the silence
of my life before her.

But it's gone now,
its music quieted.
I still wait to hear it -
its rise, its ripple, its reverberation
the careless abandon
that made me believe
tomorrow could be beautiful.

I live now among echoes,
pieces of her joy caught in the
corners
of old conversation.
I would give anything to hear it
again,
to let it anchor me
to the dreams
we started to weave.

But laughter, like love,
cannot be held in place.
It flutters away
as quickly as it came
and I sit in its absence
holding onto the memory
of a giggle

We danced in the marrow of fire
where your laugh was a hymn to the sun
and my breath, the breaking of storm
against your calm.

The moon was yours, wasn't it?
You claimed it in laughter,
its craters mirroring the scars you hid.
Now it hangs over me, pallid and ever so distant,
a barren reminder that your light bends,
but never stays.

Those words burned in my throat:
*****, ****, ***** -
I didn't mean them,
but the ash of those syllables
stained our sheets, our silences,
our once pure bed of possibility.

And you - ever silent. closing
a porcelain door I could not unhinge -
leaving me behind to burn.
Your heart, a locked room,
and each memory of us
a window

You watched the fire
slither up my skin, setting alight
the cracks I could not hide
Did you see in that moment
the vividness of passion I carried for you?
Or was I always destined to be the bridge you crossed
towards safer lands?

I revisit these ruins, every so often now.
my specter joined by your shadow,
an ugly companion you left behind.
This Pompeian heritage cemented,
as if love was the kindling
and our destruction the inevitable fire.

Tell me:
when you think of me,
do you ache?

Or am I now the soot on your hands
that you wash clean?

I ache for the curve of your lips,
the secret valleys where your whispers rest,
the gentle storm of your breath
against the quiet hunger of my own.

In the trembling air, I find
the ghost of your fingers weaving through mine,
their warmth a fragile truth
that lingers in the hollows of my palm.

Your body, once a map I learned by heart,
now drifts like a dream behind a veil.
I long to cross the distance,
to find your skin beneath the moonlight,
to trace the constellations of us
once more into the quiet rhythms of night.

Each moment apart is a wound,
an echo of love that fills my chest
until it spills into the open,
a river that cries your name
with every pulse of the tide.

Oh, let me fall into you again,
into the world we made
in stolen hours and hushed embraces.
Let my lips find yours
as if the universe depends on their meeting,
as if time itself stops to listen
to the story only we can tell.

the nights are longer now,
even though the clock says they’re the same.
the air feels heavier,
like it knows I’m here
alone.

there’s a hole where her laugh used to be,
where her smell lingered on my shirt,
and where her voice
turned this place
into something that felt
alive.

I reach for her in the dark,
not to find her—
I know she’s not there—
but to remind myself
I ever held her at all.

we burned like cheap whiskey,
sharp, bitter,
gone too fast,
leaving me with the kind of hangover
you don’t walk off.
you were my way out—
or at least a hope,
a muse, a laugh,
something to hold on to
in this stupid, circular life.

but I was too much,
and not enough.
all my broken pieces,
all your quiet exits.
you looked at me like I was the problem
you couldn’t solve,
and I looked at you like
you could save me.

love doesn’t save anyone.
it guts you.
it leaves you bleeding out
on a ***** floor,
picking through the mess
for anything worth keeping.
I haven’t found it yet.

is just the love
that once belonged to you
that now
has nowhere else to go.