I see you in the space between streetlights,
where the wind tastes like October
and the leaves whisper your name.
I told myself I wouldn’t go back there,
but memory is a cruel, old house—
doors always open, floorboards aching.

You left your sweater in my closet,
a ghost I never learned to bury.
I wear it when the air gets cold,
pretending it still smells like you,
pretending I don’t feel like the house we built
has been condemned.

It’s funny how we used to love the fall,
how we swore we’d never be like them,
the people who left when things got hard,
the people who stopped saying goodnight.
And now, I walk past strangers
wearing your face in their shadows,
and you, somewhere,
are learning how to love without me.

I don’t know what’s scarier—
the ghosts, or the fact
that I let myself become one.