### For Sally
Time slips past — unnoticed —
never to be captured,
and I think of the night
I could have reached for you
but didn’t.
You were a breath away,
close enough that the air
changed temperature,
close enough that the world
waited for me to move.
I told myself
there would be another moment,
another soft opening
in the fabric of our days.
I was wrong.
Your memory returns now
like a warm front breaking,
a shift in pressure
I feel in my ribs.
It carries the shape
of what I failed to choose.
I walk through the years
that followed,
each one a quiet echo
of the one I let slip.
If I could step back
into that half-lit room,
I would not hesitate.
I would cross the small distance
between us
and let the world
rearrange itself around that choice.
But time,
that gentle thief,
moves only forward,
and all I can hold now
is the gold of what might have been,
warming my hands
for a moment
before it fades.
Feb 18
Feb 18, 2026 at 7:17 AM UTC
### For Sally
Time slips past — unnoticed —
never to be captured,
and I think of the night
I could have reached for you
but didn’t.
You were a breath away,
close enough that the air
changed temperature,
close enough that the world
waited for me to move.
I told myself
there would be another moment,
another soft opening
in the fabric of our days.
I was wrong.
Your memory returns now
like a warm front breaking,
a shift in pressure
I feel in my ribs.
It carries the shape
of what I failed to choose.
I walk through the years
that followed,
each one a quiet echo
of the one I let slip.
If I could step back
into that half-lit room,
I would not hesitate.
I would cross the small distance
between us
and let the world
rearrange itself around that choice.
But time,
that gentle thief,
moves only forward,
and all I can hold now
is the gold of what might have been,
warming my hands
for a moment
before it fades.
What might have been?
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