There was a time when I thought
being whole meant being perfect,
like there was a line to cross,
a place to arrive,
but now I know that’s a lie.

There is no such thing as completion.
There is only becoming,
and it’s never pretty.
It’s never neat.
It’s messy, and raw, and terrifying.

I think of you still,
not as a person anymore
but as a season,
the kind that lingers
long after the leaves have fallen.

The kind that arrives quietly,  
carrying too much beauty  
and too much sorrow  
to stay for long.  

You were autumn to me,  
a slow burning symphony of decay,  
the kind of fire that doesn’t scorch  
but cradles the earth in amber light,  
turning everything it touches  
into something aching,  
something holy.  

You were the air in October,  
sharp with the bite of dying things,  
but sweet in the way only endings can be.  
You were trees shedding their grief,  
each leaf a farewell,  
whirling like a thousand paper prayers  
that never quite reached heaven.  

You were the sky at twilight,  
bruised and bleeding orange,  
the sun clinging desperately to the horizon,  
begging for just one more moment  
before the dark.  

You were the ground beneath my feet,  
soft with surrender,  
the earth folding itself inward,  
readying for silence.  
Every step felt fragile,  
as if I might break the world  
just by moving through it.  

You were the way the wind spoke,  
low and mournful,  
dragging whispers of yesterday  
through fields of brittle gold.  
You were the taste of apples  
just past their prime,
sweet at first bite,  
but bitter by the core.  

You were a season that demanded to be felt,  
not just seen,  
wrapping the world in a kind of beauty  
that stung to hold.  
And I tried,
God, I tried,
to gather you in my arms,  
to press you between the pages of me,  
but you were already dissolving,  
slipping through my fingers  
like smoke from a devastating fire.

You were autumn to me,  
a hymn to impermanence,  
a lover who kissed me  
only to leave the taste of endings  
on my lips.  
And still, I loved you,
because how could I not?  
How could anyone not love  
something that dies  
so beautifully?

There was a time when I thought
being whole meant being perfect,
like there was a line to cross,
a place to arrive,
but now I know that’s a lie.

There is no such thing as completion.
There is only becoming,
and it’s never pretty.
It’s never neat.
It’s messy, and raw, and terrifying.

I’ll love you until the world forgets the art of beginnings. I’ll love you until the seasons forget to change, until autumn, that old poet, stops dressing the trees in amber and gold, and leaving the sky bruised and bleeding orange. I’ll love you until summer loses its spark, until spring dies. I’ll love you until the rain forgets how to dance on windows. I’ll love you until the waves forget how to return to the shore. I’ll love you until the wind no longer hums.

I’ll love you until the clocks in my cathedral of waiting stop ticking, their hands finally still. I’ll love you until time grows tired of moving forward, leaving us suspended forever. I’ll love you until the thief time is, grows weary of dismantling moments.

I’ll love you until the rivers turn quiet, until the oceans lose their breath, and the tide no longer pulls me toward you. I’ll love you until the earth itself ceases to hold its grief, until it splits open and reveals bones, roots, things that lived and loved and died. I’ll love you until every flower withers in surrender, as though even nature knows the aching beauty of letting go. I’ll love you until the earth itself stops weeping for the dead.

I’ll love you until the sun forgets how to rise at dawn and the moon no longer remembers to take its place at dusk. I’ll love you until the moon’s pale face is no longer a witness to our sorrow. I’ll love you until the moon is no longer a silver sentinel but a pale, lifeless stone. I’ll love you until the stars begin to tremble at the thought of our absence. I’ll love you until the stars themselves collapse, one by one, until their light no longer traces your name across the vast sky.

I’ll love you until language fails me, until I no longer have the words to describe you. I’ll love you until the silence between us becomes unbearable, until i no longer hear your voice—perhaps then I’ll feel it, understand it. I’ll love you until my bones no longer ache with the hunger for you. I’ll love you until I realize I have nothing left to love. I’ll love you until I stop looking for pieces of you in strangers.

I’ll love you until the spaces between my bones no longer ache to expand, until my hands no longer remember the shape of you, until my heart no longer carries the burden of you. I’ll love you until the emptiness inside me is no longer shaped like you, until the ache finds somewhere else to go. Until I stop seeing beauty in the way things break. Until my hands forget how they bled for you. Until the salt in my eyes stings like sugar. Until my heart stops reaching for something that was never truly mine to hold. Until my heart forgets how to break.

You didn’t call it love,
but it could’ve been.
You never called it love,
but you laid the pieces down anyway,
knowing I’d try to glue them together
with whatever was left of me.

There’s a hunter in me still,

a calm and coiled predator,

watching through the lattice of rib bones,

eager for your next misstep.


I call it survival,

but the rawness of wanting

feels more like a devouring.
How many times can I trap you

before I’m the one locked in?
Before I slip into the shape of prey,

all taut limbs and trembling bones,
watery eyes and ***** fingernails,

and drown in the sharp end of the game.

You whispered like a bleeding lamb,

soft enough to hide the teeth behind your gums,
sweet enough to steal

the poison from the core of the apple.


I thought it would be different

if I drank you down slowly,

if I let my own venom lie dormant.

But I chewed through the skin of silence

and found what the wolves left behind:
the bitter marrow of your truth,

still sticky with lies.

I could leave you there,

a skeleton in my hunting grounds.

But the hunger for reckoning

stalks me.

It’s feral now.

And when you’re undone,

when your name curls in my mouth

like the peel of a burned fruit,

I will not spit it out.

The flowers died on Monday;
i kept them wilted in the vase,
dried petals on the countertop
and foggy water sitting still.
i couldn’t bear to let them go,
so i dried them to keep instead
for dead flowers linger longer
than the absence of any at all.