It rings again—that liquid shudder,
a drowned plea in the throat of night.
I know this tune. I’ve danced on its edges,
laughter sharpening the blade.

Through the peephole: a silhouette,
blurred by tears that won’t come.
My hand on the latch hesitates, then yields.

There, grinning with the face I buried last winter,
my loneliness offers white roses,
their stems weeping light
for the wedding that never was.

And yet—

You once rang like joy.
I memorized footsteps too light to stay.
Your heartbeat, a hammer;
mine, the ruins it shaped.
Your eyes—where my salt found its shore—
still pooling, still fresh.

The moon turns its black eye away.
I cry thunder; silence swallows the sound.

No one knocks. No one asks
why every ring becomes a funeral bell,
why every visitor wears my own ghost,
arms brimming with lilies—

while my hands beg for roses,
red as the wound you named,
red as the voice that echoes
when no one rings at all.