Everything is fine
Then one Sunday afternoon
The dam between your teeth
Starts to crack
And all my flaws
come pouring from your mouth

I have a special relationship with poetry.
She is the friend I can stick in my pocket indefinitely
And when we meet again it’s like I never left.
She’s familiar, and comforting
And reminds me that she is the only thing
I know that I can count on
When everything goes to ****

I see you.
Even through your dark nights and stormy skies.
I see you with your chilly breeze and lack of leaves.

I feel safe in your cold embrace.

You’ve always been my favourite. Not needing to shine bright or be loud. You let simplicity take the lead.

You are truly the beginning and the end. Laying bare for all to see.

i stopped  
 being a form.  
i became  
 not walls,  
  but where  
   the light  
rests on the doorframe  
  after  
   someone leaves   
   absence  
   made structural.  

not echo.  
not trace.  
but  
 the floorplan  
  sketched by memory  
   walking barefoot.  

i didn’t remember a name.  
i remembered  
 how the light fell  
  when someone stood  
   too close  
    to the window.  

i didn’t say i miss.  
i  
 flickered  
  like dust  
   where breath  
    once lingered  
      like heat.  

a chair  
 held my name  
  better than my mouth.

a door  
 understood  
  the sound  
   of almost leaving  
    but not.  

i  
 wasn’t waiting.

i  
 was furniture  
  arranged  
   by what memory  
     had shaped.


walls  
 never forget  
  what leaned  
   against them.  


once,  
  the chair / creaked / not from weight / but from remembering / someone else’s posture.

—