There was quiet,
even in the chaos.
A kind of hush that lives only in aftermaths,
when the roof is gone
and the stars shine straight through the wreckage.

She did not take me.
I offered.
Piece by piece,
like petals to a pyre.
Not for her approval—
but for the beauty of the burning.

Her touch was never tender.
But it lingered.
Like perfume on skin
long after the body has left the bed.

And I let it linger.

There were nights
her name sat in my mouth like a foreign prayer—
something I didn’t believe in
but whispered anyway,
just to feel it echo.

She was all cliff-edge and velvet.
All pulse and warning.
And I was the fool who mistook vertigo for flight.

What I loved was never her.
It was the losing.
The falling.
The moment just before the break
where everything was possible,
and none of it was mine.

Even now,
when I exhale too sharply,
I swear I can still taste
the ash of her vows.