He wakes in the static
of a nameless hotel room.
The dream clings
not a ghost, but a wet shirt.
Last night’s phone call still bleeding
in the mirror.


He walks like silence walks,
heavy with something
he hasn’t spoken in years.
His fingers tremble
as if each nail were a tiny antenna
trying to find her frequency.


Down the stairs
his breath is graffiti
on the glass of the revolving door.
The city hisses like a snake
that remembers him from another life.
He is a boy again,
trying not to cry in public.


There is a man with a payphone stall
just off the corner he trades coins
for connection.
Seventeen bucks a call
is the going rate for hope.


But he has none.
Only the ache of a thousand
could have beens
stacked like unread postcards
in his chest.
She is at the airport.
She is not coming back.


He kneels beside a beggar
asks him for mercy.
The beggar laughs like a church
with a broken bell.
You want a piece of me?
Here take the only one left.


The beggar’s hand hesitates,
but then it opens
like an old book.
Inside:
A breath.
A dollar.
A quiet dying star.


The call costs seventeen bucks.
And the man,
the man who hadn’t spoken to God in years,
whispers her name into a plastic mouthpiece
as if it were prayer.
He forgets the world owes no grace.


She says goodbye in another language.
He doesn’t understand,
but the dial tone
says enough.
The beggar watches him
like a soldier watches a falling bird.


When it ends,
he doesn’t cry.
He counts the silence
as it climbs his throat.
The beggar says nothing
only turns his palms up
as if asking the morning
what mercy costs these days.

I have seen men stay—
not because the world asked,
but because their promises whispered louder than fate.

They kneel by the grave of trust,
watering it with silence,
torn hands, and undone dreams.

Loyalty,
is not medals, not songs—
but the quiet refusal to leave
when everything burns.

He loved her
like broken glass holds light—
sharp, trembling, dangerous
but never letting go.

His tears
do not fall where eyes can see;
they bleed into stone,
into night,
into fists pressed hard to bone.

The world laughed.
She left.
He stayed.
Like an old tree refusing to unroot
even when the wind ripped off its leaves.

Sometimes,
pain is just another name for loyalty—
sometimes,
love forgets to be kind
but the loyal never forget to stay.

They curse him—
"You fool."
He whispers back—
"She was worth the ruin."

The ache,
the ache grows ribs inside him,
a second skeleton made of memory,
and each breath—
a war between holding on
and letting go.

And yet he stands,
storm-eyed, sunburned, spine bent not by fear,
but the weight of a vow
that no longer speaks back.

Because loyalty is not romantic.
It is tragic.
It is noble.
It is madness.
And still—
it is love.

He sat on a jagged pine throne
Not crowned in gold, but by salt and brine
And the sea stretched far and unkind
Each tide a tick that marked the time

He waited long with hollow eyes
For the one who calmed the skies.
The waves would come the waves would go
Each swell a whisper she won't show

And hope was a terrible tender guest
A swell breathed in and made could to rest
His only friend, he called the tide
They played until the bones would bend

The tide became the darling, the storm Became loud
And enveloped him in seafoam's shroud
Kissed his feet, climbed to his knees
Etched her name across his grief

Still he fought through drift and year
Through drowned-out suns and vanished fear
Every tide that ticked was another scar
Another rib beneath the stars

And now he sits, with nothing left
His hands now bone, held only time's remains
A skeleton with heart long gone
And still he waits he lingers on

For if she came, the world would freeze
The wind, hush the waves ease
That single gaze, a breath, a name
And time itself would catch fire In her name

But she never came...