I’m writing this
knowing you’ll never read it.
I don’t even know if you you regconize me.

But sometimes
I play our song —
that beat only we would recognize,
the one you sent me in the middle of the night
when we were teenagers,
buried among countless other songs,
but this one stayed,
etched in my heart.

In our dreams,
I hold our baby in my arms
and hum it as a lullaby.
It’s perfect for that.

As I sway softly to the music,
my heart warms and aches,
as if, in some other universe,
this dream wasn’t a dream at all
but a truth.

I love you — you know that.
Or maybe the love I have to give
was never enough for you.
Or maybe it was.
I’m not sure anymore.

We are confused, inconsistent,
like the shift between seasons.
You never know whether to bring a coat or an umbrella,
so we linger in the in-between.

Either way,
the song is saved in my favorite playlist.
I know it’s in yours too.
It’s proof that what we felt for each other
was real.

There’s a spark between your lips, and it lights mine
when we kiss— we’re a match: fighting against all
the ways we’ve tried to smother what we feel.
As the sun cuts through me, kissing my skin in
gold— but my tears taste like wine, and my hopes
lounge in the soft armchairs of dreams.

Now, I hate the silence when I’m left with myself—
scrolling through ghosts in my phone, each message
once charging me like a battery cell.

Now it’s just me, trapped in a cold heart's prison cell,
echoing for company, thinking of the days I was once
drowning  in a well. But all there’s left to say is a bitter,
shrugged,

                “Oh well.”

You’re not letting me go.
You’re making everything harder,
slowing down my plans.

Do you still miss me?

Messages are read, all their ticks are blue –
an "I love you," comes double-ticked…
maybe it’s not you.

Love’s built for two, their reasons too –
a fake kind of love still tries to play true…
maybe it wasn’t you.

No, I won’t cry, still stuck up without glue –
a sympathetic protagonist, antagonised by
their own heart, and yes… this much is true:

Perhaps I was never meant
to fall in love with you.

It hurts in places
I never knew existed.
Like how my fingertips ache,
and a mournful scream
lives in the back of my throat.

There is a black hole
where my heart once lived,
dense and ravenous,
swallowing light,
devouring warmth,
collapsing joy
into nothing.

Some days,
the void feels large enough
to consume me,
completely.

But still,
I wake.
Still,
I breathe.

And somehow,
without noticing,
I’ve grown strong enough
to carry it.
Not because the pain has lessened,
but because it’s changing me.

Sometimes,
the pain wants to cry out
I love you
loud enough
to reach you.

But those words
would fall into a silence
you no longer fill.

I wish I’d said them
a thousand more times
when they still had
somewhere to land.

I wish I could say
I love you
instead of
I loved you.

But if this grief
is just love
with no place to go,
I will ache
in all these new and strange places.
Willingly.

And I will wake up every day,
and breathe, one breath at a time.

Because this pain
is simply love,
wearing a different skin.

Turn off the lights — I’m fighting myself in the dark.
My skin, a caressing sun; roses fall and kiss me
with lip-shaped petals, trying to open me wide.
But they’ll censor you — they’ll look away, so you
don’t shine as bright as you are.

And me? I pluck myself from a group of self-doubts.
At the pace of this age, I slow, though youth fast-feeds
through my hands, trying to unearth green shoots
of heaven’s cheer. A chosen emotion rises — as if my
heart readies itself for a rapture. Earthen hands *****
out dreams from soil. To be called a ***** — or to *****
others? What a question to be.

As I’m plotting in the potting shed, where we shared
hope like dew-struck grass. We watered our dreams
with tears, and have felt baptized in fear. Shaking daily
at the grip of then —as if winter left its bare bones in my
hands. But I’m not ready to net a coy smile, not when my
butterfly net carries extra holes.

As all my hopes lie on the ground, seeds waiting to be
buried in the dark —waiting to grow. The lights of faith
are shut. And must I wait for fireworks to explode across
my sky again, like next year’s celebrations? But I won’t
shut my eyes this time. Yet I’ll stay open, just in case
tomorrow decides to find me first.