There was a doorway I kept walking past,
pretending it was still open.
Your absence stood there as the outline
of something that used to breathe,
a moment that refuses to sit down.
Even now, something in the doorway listens,
waiting for the words I never spoke.
I wasn’t ready for you to disappear.
A sound that remembers me better than I remember it
follows me through every room.
I keep returning to the moment you vanished,
as if repetition could soften the blow,
as if memory might open a door
already sealed behind you,
quiet as a held breath.
What lingers isn’t you anymore,
but the version of me
still standing in that doorway,
listening for a voice
that dissolved before it reached the threshold.
I’ve learned to live with the echo,
to let it move through me
like weather I can’t predict,
a reminder that some doors close
before we know we were still standing in them.