Ready to shock unconscious—
a scream locked in my chest,
a storm swirling where love should have been.
Forsaken.
Forgotten.
Black wings fold tight against my eyes,
dragging me to the place
where breath turns to silence,
and hearts go to break.

If you had an inkling,
even the faintest whisper
that I existed,
why didn’t you look for me?
Why didn’t you fight the tide,
pull me from the hollow space
where I learned to disappear?

Why was I the one who searched,
who fought,
embarrassing myself
for your love?
I stood in the open,
raw,
bleeding,
hands stretched toward a ghost
that never turned back.

I wasn’t a black hole,
wasn’t an absence.
I was flesh,
I was blood,
I was here.

Maybe we could have danced in the light,
or I could have played tag
with your sons in the long grass.
But instead,
I became the shadow
you refused to see.

And now that it’s all been said and done,
the bitter truth cuts deeper—
it turns out
I’m the one who resembles you the most.

Half my life
I wandered,
seeking a name
that could fit into my chest.
Yours.
Mine.
Ours.

But you never came.
The silence stayed.
And black wings
are all that’s left to hold me.

I found a photo today—
its edges frayed,
its silence speaking louder than memory.
The ghost of her,
born of pain but draped in a soft, unknowing light.
How could she not see?
The naïve tilt of her mouth,
the unarmored gaze of someone
who believed in futures made of love.

I would step into that stillness if I could,
shake her shoulders,
tell her to run before the lies
knotted themselves around her ribs,
before his dagger—
not sharp, but slow,
pierced the center of her trust.

I would tell her to proclaim love
where it mattered,
to her daughter watching silently,
to the family she left in the shadows
for a man who swallowed the light.
Every day, her daughter saw it—
the slow dying,
a death stretched across years,
not swift but unrelenting,
like a clock with no hands to stop it.

Run, I’d say,
before the hollow gestures,
before the waiting
for a love that never belonged to you.
See through him,
his promises fragile as dried leaves,
his truths curving away like smoke.

But now I hold the photo,
and she is already gone,
a ghost I can only argue with
in the quiet of my mind,
a ghost who will never hear me.