I still see them laughing,
their voices overlapping through the screen,
like nothing ever broke,
like nothing ever changed.

And I sit here,
in a room that used to be full of noise,
wondering when I became the ghost
that left before the punchline.

They move on so easily,
as if the silence I drowned in
was just background static,
a thing to forget, not to feel.

And I hate that it still gets to me.
That a list of names and hollow “heys”
can scrape at the ribs of someone
who once called that noise home.

Because I remember,
the jokes,
the stupid games,
the nights we mistook belonging for forever.

But forever is short when you're the one left out.
And envy tastes bitter
when you swallow it alone.

One still checks in sometimes,
a small mercy,
a reminder that I existed once
in the warmth of their world.

And still, I ache.
Not for them, maybe,
but for the version of me
that used to belong somewhere.

Now it's just me,
and the hum of a quiet call that never connects.

But maybe this loneliness
is a kind of cleansing,
a cruel way of teaching me
to find peace in my own noise.

So I watch them from afar,
not with hate,
but with a hollow kind of grace.

Because they still have each other,
and I have what's left of me.
It's not much,
but it's what remains
after the room went quiet.