I wasn’t crying.
I was hydrating my grief
from the inside out.

He said, “You’re not dramatic. Just detailed.”
I said, “You’re not cruel. Just consistent.”
We called that a compromise.
(or else a hostage negotiation.)

There’s glitter in my carpet
from a party I threw
to prove I wasn’t waiting on him.
I wore white.
Not bridal,
but still white enough
to make someone feel guilty.

I lit sparklers like sirens,
toasted survival.
Nobody clapped.

I collect apologies I don’t want,
write scripts for confrontations
that end in standing ovations,
then lose the footage
in a hardware crash
I secretly caused.

I take the stairs two at a time,
just to feel something chase me.
I text “I’m fine :)”
like it’s a safe word—
to keep the spiral
polite.

I rehearse the voicemail
he never left
like it’s Chekhov.
Like if I say it right,
the gun goes off
and I disappear
beautifully.

At the end of the dream,
he’s always wearing my hoodie—
saying something tender,
just slightly
too late.

And I wake up
with eyelashes on my wrists,
thinking—
Maybe I am the problem.
But God—
you should’ve seen the poems.