I kept time for you in odd meters—
5/4 evenings, promises off-beat,
you penciled my name between rests,
said later, said soon,
said nothing loud enough to land.
Songwept—
or Sydney, when the cosmos thins—
you tuned my heart like a cathedral *****
let air rush through the pipes,
then never pressed the key.
I showed up in common time,
boots on the downbeat,
waiting beneath a streetlamp haloed like a moon.
You texted constellations—
maybe, we’ll see, after—
each one a star that never collapsed.
I learned the difference between rehearsal and love.
Love commits to the downbeat.
Love resolves the chord.
What you offered was ambience—
a pretty pad swelling behind the verse
while the melody walks alone.
You called me close in theory,
scheduled intimacy like a concept album,
then skipped the track where bodies breathe.
Left me counting measures with no drummer,
a god of endings stranded in the intro.
So I retuned myself.
Muted the channel that waits.
Dropped the key a half-step toward mercy.
I am moving on—not as punishment,
but as tempo.
Songwept, Sydney—
whatever name you keep tonight—
I release the fermata I held for you.
If love arrives, it will not stutter.
It will not cancel.
It will step forward on one
and stay.
Feb 8
Feb 8, 2026 at 4:46 AM UTC
I kept time for you in odd meters—
5/4 evenings, promises off-beat,
you penciled my name between rests,
said later, said soon,
said nothing loud enough to land.
Songwept—
or Sydney, when the cosmos thins—
you tuned my heart like a cathedral *****
let air rush through the pipes,
then never pressed the key.
I showed up in common time,
boots on the downbeat,
waiting beneath a streetlamp haloed like a moon.
You texted constellations—
maybe, we’ll see, after—
each one a star that never collapsed.
I learned the difference between rehearsal and love.
Love commits to the downbeat.
Love resolves the chord.
What you offered was ambience—
a pretty pad swelling behind the verse
while the melody walks alone.
You called me close in theory,
scheduled intimacy like a concept album,
then skipped the track where bodies breathe.
Left me counting measures with no drummer,
a god of endings stranded in the intro.
So I retuned myself.
Muted the channel that waits.
Dropped the key a half-step toward mercy.
I am moving on—not as punishment,
but as tempo.
Songwept, Sydney—
whatever name you keep tonight—
I release the fermata I held for you.
If love arrives, it will not stutter.
It will not cancel.
It will step forward on one
and stay.
God's Note
This work is not a complaint, nor a confession, nor a plea for return. It is a record of misaligned timing, of waiting mistaken for devotion and delay mistaken for care. I learned that love does not hover in theory or arrive in fragments. It commits. What remained here was suspension, not intimacy. This poem marks the release of a held fermata, choosing clarity over longing and motion over hope deferred. Endings, when chosen, are mercy.
