We’ve become the sum of unsent messages,
drafts and echoes hanging in the air,
the silence between us heavy as concrete,
not the gentle drift of autumn leaves but the crack
of ice splitting in a thaw—
violent, sharp, a warning.

You stand at the edge of my thoughts,
a shadow not fully formed,
and I watch as your hand reaches out,
not to touch, but to test the distance
we’ve carved with our own hands,
calloused from the chisel, the hammer.

You used to smell like rosemary—
fresh, clean, cutting through the dull
of everyday life. Now I catch
the scent of something burnt,
like wires short-circuiting,
smoke with no fire,
no warmth.

This bed, once a landscape,
has shrunk to a single cold corner.
We sleep, backs turned,
pretending the night doesn’t echo
with things unsaid,
like rooms abandoned
before they’re fully furnished.

In dreams, I see you
with the face of a stranger,
speaking in tongues I can’t decipher.
We’ve become a cipher, a code
cracked too many times,
its secrets bled dry,
leaving only empty symbols
on a page we no longer read.

When the light slips through the blinds,
it’s not dawn, but interrogation.
Each ray a question,
each shadow an answer.
We don’t need words to know—
this isn’t love’s fading,
it’s the rupture,
the shatter before the silence.