we build with trembling hands
convinced that care alone will keep things whole

we think if we love right
soft, honest, and quiet
that it’ll stay

but nothing lasts forever

even the sun, loved by every leaf
eventually leaves the sky

i get uncomfortable when someone cries
not the usual kind shifting feet eyes darting away
but the kind that settles in the ribs like a cold ache
like something is carving a hollow in my chest with bare hands

i want to reach out
say it’ll be okay
wrap the air around them like a blanket
but their pain is a country i don’t have a map for
i can’t walk their road i only know how it looks from where i stand

and that’s the worst part
that i’ll never know their grief exactly
only my version of it
only my helpless echo of what they must feel

i remember the night
the room was dim not dark enough to hide in
just soft enough to make everything feel more fragile
they sat on the edge of the bed
eyes red voice cracking on a name they couldn’t finish

i didn’t know what to do with my hands
i thought about reaching for theirs
but something in me froze
not fear not shame just that aching awareness
that nothing i could say would unbreak what broke them

so i just sat there
and the silence between us grew heavy
like grief had a body and it chose to lie down between us

and all i could think was
i wish i could wear their pain for a day
just long enough to understand it
just long enough to make them feel a little less alone

but all i had was my version
my own memories dressed in different names
and in that moment it didn’t feel like enough

i’m tired of writing these poems
tired of chasing the right words
for a feeling that never wanted to be named

tired that nothing i write
comes close to the way it felt
to love you
and lose you
and still carry it all

no stanza, no line,
no late night whisper into the void
has ever been enough

the love i have for you
deserves more than language
and yet
language is all i have

i wish bougainvilleas wept rust instead of color
i wish fear brushed more shoulders than it missed
and the emptiness spoke in a silence too familiar to be strange

i wish eyes didn’t flinch from what it is
i wish, more often than not, people saw things as they were
not softer, not kinder, just as they are

i wish life had been easier to some, and harder to others,
just so we’d stop pretending fairness ever had a say

i wish someone had named it all earlier
the ache, the quiet, the not-enough-ness of being here

maybe then we’d carry it better
maybe then we’d know that some things only bruise, and never bloom
maybe then we’d stop waiting for wounds to turn into flowers

the quiet stretches like a slow wound
dragging minutes into lifetimes
i breathe between memories
that never quite finish dying

there's a photograph we don't look at anymore
not because we forgot
but because remembering feels like swallowing glass

it's tucked in the drawer beside the broken charger
the old watch that still ticks
and the letter you never finished
half a sentence half a goodbye

grief doesn't arrive with thunder
it comes in the quiet
in the way your name still autofills
in the way the wind knocks on windows like you used to

people say time heals
but time just teaches you how to walk
with a hole inside you
wide enough for a life that won't come back

some nights i still leave the porch light on
not because i believe you're coming home
but because love - real love
doesn't know how to stop hoping