I will wait in the slow, hushed hours that drain colour from the sky, knowing the shade won’t brighten again for me but not tonight.

I will wait, though every shadow around me murmurs of your absence, though each heartbeat  drums the rhythm of  truth I’ve heard a thousand times.
You are not coming, not through the autumnal mist, not in the breath of the breeze or the star’s nocturnal quiet watch.
Still I will wait,

I will wait, a promise kept only to myself, a vow unspoken but alive in the chambers of my heart.  I will wait, even as I feel the night lean in close, weaving soft threads of solitude through the silence, as if to remind me that this waiting is mine alone.

For in some dim way, I find company in it; the tender ache that speaks to the memory of what I hoped, of what I dared believe, against all reason, against all proof.

I know you will not come, and yet here I remain.
Here, beneath the silent weight of the grey sky, beneath the patient, unmoving stars, I will wait for you.

And in this waiting, I hold to a flickering truth: that even in your absence, I am somehow more complete for having waited; if only for a shadow, if only for the echo of a dream.