You had no name to fix in place, no history to trace,
just something sudden in the dark that did not leave a face.
The world continued in its state, unchanged in how it seems,
but every path I used to walk now fractures at the seams.
I learned to move with measured steps, to note each door and light,
to map escape in quiet ways before the fall of night.
The ordinary turned exact, each movement held and planned,
as if the ground might give itself away beneath my hand.
There were days reduced to fractions I could barely hold or keep,
where waking felt like trespass and the only peace was sleep.
I counted breath in careful sums, then lost the will to care,
and stood in places edged with thought I couldn’t name out there.
You made of me a passing thing, a story stripped and shown,
a body turned to evidence, a life not fully owned.
And anger, slow and constant, set like metal in a seam,
too low to rise as violence, too fixed to stay unseen.
But you are nothing I can find, no outline I can see,
no past to break, no future where you answer back to me.
And still I carry what you left, though not in ways you knew;
not everything was taken then, not everything was you.