I found a photo today—
its edges frayed,
its silence speaking louder than memory.
The ghost of her,
born of pain but draped in a soft, unknowing light.
How could she not see?
The naïve tilt of her mouth,
the unarmored gaze of someone
who believed in futures made of love.

I would step into that stillness if I could,
shake her shoulders,
tell her to run before the lies
knotted themselves around her ribs,
before his dagger—
not sharp, but slow,
pierced the center of her trust.

I would tell her to proclaim love
where it mattered,
to her daughter watching silently,
to the family she left in the shadows
for a man who swallowed the light.
Every day, her daughter saw it—
the slow dying,
a death stretched across years,
not swift but unrelenting,
like a clock with no hands to stop it.

Run, I’d say,
before the hollow gestures,
before the waiting
for a love that never belonged to you.
See through him,
his promises fragile as dried leaves,
his truths curving away like smoke.

But now I hold the photo,
and she is already gone,
a ghost I can only argue with
in the quiet of my mind,
a ghost who will never hear me.

She thought love would age like wine,
Smooth and dark, a holy sign.
Gentle whispers, velvet skies,
But the truth came wrapped in lies.

The shadows fell, they did not ask,
His voice a sermon, a shattering mask.
His absence carved, sharp and deep,
A wound that woke her in her sleep.

She drank the night to drown his face,
To forget the silence, to erase the space.
But the glass broke sharp against her hand,
And the blood sang truths she couldn’t stand.

Healing came like a thief in the rain,
Soft as ash, a balm for pain.
A knock at the door, a touch so kind,
An old friend’s voice she thought she'd left behind.

She stopped the drinking, stopped the fall,
Her laugh returned, a hymn in the hall.
Her wrinkles spoke of battles won,
Each line a prayer to the rising sun.

Now she writes by a candle’s glow,
Her words are rivers, strong and slow.
She meets her gaze in the looking glass,
A woman who rose from the broken past.

She lifts her glass to the evening light,
To the love she lost, to the endless fight.
Bold and unbreakable, she stands alone,
Aged like wine, her spirit her throne.